A television with built-in speech rate converter
A television which slows down news speech for easier listening


Background and purpose
Many elderly people have difficulty in clearly hearing the voices in broadcast programs because the speech is often too fast. We have focused on the development of a device which slows down rapid speech without affecting the sound quality--the effect is as if the speaker had begun to speak more slowly. In this exhibition, we show a prototype of a more human-friendly television with built-in speech rate converter that is applicable to digital Hi-Vision broadcasting.

Features
This TV enables the user to reduce the rate of speech in broadcast programs in real time. The slowed-down speech does not, even so, overrun the original time-frame of the program and no extra processing of the video signals required. It makes the speech more intelligible, particularly for news announcements, which provide a variety of novel information items every day. The system:

  1. Reduces the speech rate of voices on broadcast programs at the receiver.
  2. Retains the original voice pitch and personality with high quality sound.
  3. Absorbs the time delay due to speech rate reduction automatically without overrun.
  4. Is applicable to speech in any language.
Future activities
We plan to apply the speech rate conversion technique to a wide range of broadcast programs besides news announcements, and efforts will be made to develop this human-friendly TV service for practical use with a manufacturer and other participants.

The principle of absorbing the delay relative to the picture


A Super-Sensitive Microphone Picking Up Even Insect Footsteps
Insect Microphone

Background and purpose
This microphone has been developed to pick up the sounds of crawling insects like ants, which was impossible until now. It has added greater realism to TV programs featuring microscopic views of natural life.

Special Features
This microphone picks up the vibrations caused on the surface of the object where the insect crawls. Air-borne sounds attenuate quickly and cannot be heard from a distance, whereas sounds spread through a solid body without much loss. Thus, a very small sound, like the crawling of insects, can be picked up efficiently with the Insect Microphone.

The microphone is of the moving coil type, and the contact pin attaches directly to the moving coil, which conducts the vibration of the solid body to the electro-magnetic circuit of the microphone.

This Insect Microphone has been used to pick up the sounds of ants, antlions and the heartbeat of snails.

Insect Microphone