Anton the robotic tongue has saved you from electrode doom

So we had a choice: either we let scientists at the University of Sheffield attach electrodes to our tongues, or they were going to go and build their own artificial mouth. Because we're not so into the whole electrode thing, they built "Anton," an animatronic tongue made of soft silicone to help them understand speech and subsequently improve speech-recognition software. This isn't the first of its kind, believe it or not -- there's much competition in the robotic mouth world. Because speech recognition systems aren't really benefiting from simply crowding them full of recorded speech, researchers want to better understand how the mouth produces sound and then create algorithms that can simply recognize speech patterns rather than try to match recordings to recordings. Sounds about right to us. Peep the creepy video after the break.

[Saad Rabia @ Jul 30th 2008 6:29AM]

David, soon you'll be born and start your path to the Blue Fairy.

[ben @ Jul 30th 2008 6:39AM]

Robotic blowjobs.

[swingin' dick hero @ Jul 30th 2008 7:11AM]

Sounds like this droid got too little attention from its makers.

[霽月瀛台 @ Jul 30th 2008 7:56AM]

it needs to be quicker thou.

[BratPAQ @ Jul 30th 2008 6:45AM]

why not start at the mouth first? read speech like how deaf read other peoples speech, mouth reading.

[Macphillie @ Jul 30th 2008 7:18AM]

hahahah Yess my home town of Sheffield :)

[Zut @ Jul 30th 2008 8:34AM]

YAY! I went to the University of Sheffield.

I also interviewed for a PhD place in this research group, so I might have ended up working on this project if hadn't decided to get a crappy job instead! :(

[Stiv @ Jul 30th 2008 10:49AM]

@Zut

Employer: "So do you want the sweet job or the crappy one?"

Zut: "Crappy, please!"

Um.. good choice there with the crappy job I guess.

[sambrears @ Jul 30th 2008 9:21PM]

yes go sheffield i live there

[mnmseven @ Jul 30th 2008 7:33AM]

This is one more step closer to full cyborg body.

[M.Samba @ Jul 30th 2008 8:27AM]

Robotic tongue is in ur mouth impeding ur speech. No but seriously, could you imagine having a robotic tongue and it malfunctioning? You wouldn't be able to tell anyone that your tongue is trying to kill you! Well played robotic tongue, well played

[Gordy @ Jul 30th 2008 8:36AM]

My wife will take two, please.

[maty @ Jul 30th 2008 9:38AM]

Why? Because you fail at bedroom?

[Gordy @ Jul 30th 2008 9:50AM]

Nice grasp of the language there. You should have bigger concerns.

[Randy @ Jul 30th 2008 11:03AM]

Two of these, face to face (or rather chin to chin) would make the ultimate sex toy for women. :-)

I think I'll go patent this now..

[Valgas @ Jul 30th 2008 12:33PM]

One step closer to a real Heavy Metal 2000 sex-bot

[Christian @ Jul 30th 2008 1:09PM]

Now the robots that will take over humans will now know how human flesh taste like....

[HOOPER @ Jul 30th 2008 1:44PM]

Does it have...Bluetooth?

[blackfeather @ Jul 30th 2008 2:12PM]

Now I can actually make out with my Marilyn Monrobot.

[Anton @ Jul 30th 2008 2:48PM]

Anton?

[sintayehu gezahegne @ Aug 1st 2008 3:41AM]

I thank u for further information that u will give to me