How to jam annoying talkers
March 5, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica
The speech jammer prototype (credit: the U.K. Sun)
Attention, telephone babblers, library whisperers, and hecklers: Japanese researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology want you to shut the bleep up.
They’ve developed the “Speech-jammer” gun, which will reduce you to incoherent stuttering from up to 90 feet away.
It works by recording your words and then sending them back with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds (it’s more effective when the time delay varies). The “delayed auditory feedback” (DAF) effect is similar to what you experience when echo suppression fails on Skype voice chat.
How to make it
As described in the arXiv reference cited below, the device basically includes a laser pointer, directional microphone, distance sensor, microcomputer for delay, and parametric (directional) speaker. The parametric speaker modulates the voice audio onto an ultrasonic beam, which perturbs the air in a narrow beam, demodulating the audio to generate audible sound to anyone within that beam.
The speaker uses a “parametric array” — the same principle as the Audio Spotlight and the HyperSonic Sound System. (That could be how the targeted audio advertising in Minority Report (video below) would work.) Construction information is here.
How to block it
Wear noise cancellation earpieces; trace the path of the laser beam (an IR laser would require a night-vision detector); or use an array of microphones in a circle with a comparator circuit to detect the direction of the sound beam.
Ref.: Kazutaka Kurihara, Koji Tsukada, SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback, arXiv.
Comments (8)
by gaoptimize
Suburban and urban chicken keepers need to know!: Will this work on roosters?
by TBONE
You could use this on dates when your date just goes on and on about themselves and can’t stop talking, like Mace, now you can have the option to silence people. Brillant….
by anon
Easy to make your own. Directional mic, delay unit varying the rate yourself and a few loud speakers. Thats all it is, just shiny and in a small box.
by Editor
“make your own”: right, unless you want it to be stealth, in which case you also need to build directional speakers
by the architect
Yeah, that thing’s totally stealth. LOL
by Cybernettr
I want one! Actually, this could be handy for debates when one participant consistently interrupts the other or overruns his time.
by Paul T
Just what I’ve been envisioning for my neighbor’s big dogs!
Trust me, there’s a huge ready market for this.
by gaoptimize
Regrettably, miniturized versions may be comming to political speaches or debates, voters react so intensely to verbal mistakes or gaffs. Take Rick Perry and Herman Cain as examples.