London: Tired of non-stop chatter? Here's a device that could help you.
SpeechJammer, a Japanese invention, could come handy as it is capable of stopping bores who go about inflicting their loud, non-stop chatter on other people who prefer silence.
The prototype, devised by Kazutaka Kurihara, of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada, professor of technology at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, hushes loud talkers by playing back their own words after a fraction of a second.
The hand-held device includes a microphone pointed at the talkative person and records that person's voice. It then replays the sounds through a speaker in the direction of the person after a delay of about 0.2 seconds. The microphone and speaker are directional so the device can be aimed at a speaker from a distance, like a gun.
"The system can disturb remote people's speech without any physical comfort," the scientists report in the journal MIT Technology Review.
Their tests also uncovered some unexpected findings, such as that the gun is more effective when the delay varies in time. It also works better when the speaker is reading aloud rather than giving a spontaneous monologue.
The research also revealed that it has no effect on meaningless sound sequences, such as "aaaargh".
