Talk with a dolphin via underwater translation machine

May 10, 2011 | Source: New Scientist Tech

Researchers want to work with dolphins to “co-create” a language that uses features of sounds that wild dolphins communicate with naturally. This is a collaboration between biologists at the Wild Dolphin Project in Jupiter, Florida, and AI researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT) project will use a smartphone-sized computer and two hydrophones capable of detecting the full range of dolphin sounds.

A diver will carry the computer in a waterproof case worn across the chest, and LEDs embedded around the diver’s mask will light up to show where a sound picked up by the hydrophones originates from. The diver will also have a Twiddler — a handheld device that acts as a combination of mouse and keyboard — for selecting what kind of sound to make in response.