Plants say? Smart speaker with digital ventriloquism

The Digital Ventriloquism Prorotype, developed by the research team at Carnegie Mellon University Smash Lab, is literally a smart speaker that performs digital ventriloquism.

The smart speaker alerts you when you set several notifications for efficiency, but what if it’s not like Alexa or Siri, but a vacuum cleaner or a trash can for example. The smart speaker notifies you of music playback or weather news from the central hub, but today’s IoT home appliances can be operated remotely with a voice command or interlocked with the smart speaker to provide voice guidance in the manner that laundry is finished.

Digital ventriloquism, developed by the research team, can be treated in a way that sounds like a houseplant says it wants water. Developing tricks like ventriloquism, like objects in the house talking. The core of digital ventriloquism is the second wall array ultrasound transducer. To put it simply, it makes the state of the home appliance speaking by reflecting the ultrasonic signal. The research team prepared 5 types of objects in 3 environments through experiments using prototypes. Subjects have a 92% probability that they can accurately determine where the sound is coming from, and that 100% are able to reproduce the message.

However, it is still in the prototype stage. Because it uses servo and two-dimensional array ultrasound, it is also a challenge that a series of processes take a few seconds. The research team is working on making it look like a smart speaker like Amazon or Apple. Also, since it won’t work unless it’s in the same space as the speaker, you’ll need to install multiple devices to use it all over the house, from the living room to the bathroom. Conversely, of course, if you decorate it like this, you can talk interactively, whether it’s home appliances or plants. Related information can be found here .