Invisible Messenger: A System to Whisper in a Person′s Ear Remotely by integrating Visual Tracking and Speaker Array

This paper proposes a novel computer-human interface, named invisible Messenger. It integrates face detection and tracking, and speaker array signal processing. By speaker array it is possible to form acoustic focus at the arbitrary location that is measured by the face tracking. Thus the proposed system can whisper in a person's ear as if an invisible virtual messenger were standing by the person. Not only speculative discussion, the authors have implemented a working prototype system based upon the proposed idea. This paper also describes about this prototype. In order to confirm effectiveness of the proposed idea, the authors conduct experiments using the implemented system. Experimental results demonstrate the effectivenss of the proposed idea.