Robot helps Deaf Speak

Japanese Scientist makes a disturbing yet working robotic mouth. According to information given in an article at http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/180250/20110714/robots-japan-robotic-mouth-sings.htm A Japan scientist invents and constructs a robotic human mouth in hopes it will help the hearing impaired improve their speech. The Japan scientist and Kagawa University professor Hideyuki Sawada decided to design and construct a robotic human mouth. Sawada intends for the robotic mouth to help those who are deaf or hearing impaired improve their speech that the speech of the hearing impaired tends to be of a lower quality or rather harder to understand than someone without a hearing impairment. Most hearing impaired people have to learn how to speak by simply looking at the way other people move there lips and tong in there speech in addition to learning sign language. With this new robot however it is hoped that the hearing impaired will be able to learn the prober lip movements also known as “flaps” that will help them to speak more clearly and regularly. The robotic mouth created by Sawada is made up of metal, an air pump for the artificial lungs and eight vocal cords, and a silicon tongue. This robot can speak, sing and even hear it self speak and then analyze how it could better improve its speech to be more understandable. In other words Sawada’s robotic mouth is a learning robot. The abilities of this robot are shown in a video clip found at http://youtu.be/Bht96voReEo where the robotic mouth sings the popular children’s nursery rhyme “Kagome Kagome” which translated into English means “mesh of basket.”  The robotic mouth also has an artificial nose in order to show patents how our vocal chords interact with our windpipe while we speak. Now since Sawada created a robotic human mouth it is possible that a completely robotic human being could eventually be constructed.