You speak, your phone listens

By Anna B. Mitchell  

FEBRUARY 26, 2010 9:48 a.m. (0)

Deidra Morrison has a one-way, three-hour commute to school two or three times a week.

The Clemson post-doctorate fellow is studying what motivates people and how they use social networking to maintain contact with the world as they define it.

Beyond that, Morrison is a wife, mother and Alabama resident who badly needs to get messages to her husband during the course of her drive back and forth.

“Usually it’s something I need before my husband comes home,” Morrison said. “He doesn’t like to answer his phone if he’s in the car.”

And she’s not comfortable holding a phone to her ear either, she said.

As a member of Clemson’s Human-Centered Computing Division, Morrison was part of a research team headed by Professor Juan Gilbert looking into the difficulties of communication on the go.

Gilbert has developed a VoiceTEXT system that allows users to dial an 800 number to recite a message.

The system relays the message to the desired recipient’s texting inbox as a Web link where the captured audio awaits.

All the prompts at the 800 number require a voice command, and users of the system are encouraged to use the voice setting on their cell phone to dial the 800 number in the first place.

“It’s pretty intuitive,” Morrison said. “I use it regularly.”

The South Carolina General Assembly is fast-tracking two bills this session that deal with texting behind the wheel.

A House bill, No. 4282, would outlaw texting and the hand-held use of a cell phone altogether while a Senate bill, No. 991, focuses on a ban on texting alone.

The Senate bill would make penalties for texting the same as driving under the influence, and the House bill calls for a $100 fine and two points on a motorist’s license.

Gilbert said it’s a coincidence he developed his VoiceTEXT phone application at the same time lawmakers are considering a new law.

“They’d have to ban all use of phones in a car and talking in a car to eliminate us,” he said.

Regardless of any law or its consequences, Gilbert said, people are bound to do unwise things behind the wheel – as evidenced by those who drink and drive when they know it’s not safe.

“They’ve done surveys particularly of student-aged drivers,” Gilbert said. “They say texting is dangerous but, ‘I think I can do it.’”

For drivers young and old, the notification of a text message can be irresistible – compelling people to look and reply, Gilbert said.

The professor first concluded an option for safe texting was needed when he read about a woman in Oxford, England, who while exchanging texts with her friends back-ended a disabled vehicle at the edge of an expressway – instantly killing the young woman inside.

“We have the expertise to address this,” Gilbert said. “I took a day and developed the app.”

From there, Gilbert had researchers – including Morrison – try out the application.

His background in developing voice-user interfaces for airlines and other industries made him uniquely suited for the job.

Gilbert has used voice interfaces to develop an electronic voting system accessible to those who can’t see, hear, read or is missing limbs.

Gilbert is also working on a patent for speech-recognition software that turns spoken language into text without the frequent mistakes appearing in current versions of such software.

His new software could eventually convert his voice texts into actual text messages – useful for someone in a meeting or class who can’t listen to an audio message.

Morrison said she prefers voice texts over calling people directly because she doesn’t always want to get involved in a conversation.

“They can choose to retrieve it or wait,” she said.

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