Lip-Reading Computers

Lip-Reading Computers Can Recognize Different Languages
Lip-reading computers for deaf people are a step closer with scientists successfully teaching computers to recognize different languages from the shapes and movements of people's mouths. This could also be used for converting videos of conversations into written transcripts.
Researchers have identified that each speech sound has a particular facial and mouth position, which can be mapped on video and then processed by software that associates the various orientations with the sounds they produce. The technology focuses on mapping the facial movements, called 'features', and converting them into signals which the software can process and 'translate' into text.
Researchers at the School of Computing Sciences at the University of East Anglia conducted statistical modeling of the lip motions of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers. The languages tested included English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish and Russian, and the system was able to identify with very high degree of accuracy which language was spoken by an individual speaker.

"This is an exciting advance in automatic lip-reading technology and the first scientific confirmation of something we already intuitively suspected -¬ that when people speak different languages, they use different mouth shapes in different sequences," said Professor Cox who, along with PhD student Jake Newman, led the team.

For full article read at: http://www.gizmag.com/lip-reading-computers-can-recognize-different-languages/11551/
For video check: http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/mg20227055.800/20478996001-lipreading-computer-picks-out-your-language.html