“Virtual Voice” — The voice for the dumb

Speech is one of God's gifts to humans. Speech is the main way of communication. But unfortunately the dumb people are deprived of this gift. They are unable to express themselves through the act of speaking. “Virtual Voice” helps the dumb people to overcome this difficulty and speak as the normal people do. This device makes use of AG-500 Articulograph sensor which is fixed over the lips of the user. The user has to move their lips according to the word they need to pronounce. The sensor calculates the distance between the various reference points assigned on the mouth and gives it to the software part of the device. The distance is mapped with its equivalent SAMPA code. The SAMPA code is fed as input to a voice generating software PHONWEB which is the final voice of the `dumb' person. This helps the dumb person in overcoming his disability.