Implementation of invisible messenger system to whisper in a person's ear remotely by integrating visual face tracking and speaker array

This paper presents a working prototype system of a novel computer-human interface, named invisible messenger. It integrates visual 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 implemented system can whisper in a person's ear as if an invisible virtual messenger were standing by the person. In this paper, the authors describe both ideas behind the system and key technology for the implementation. In order to confirm the effectiveness of the system, the authors conduct experiments using it. This paper also reports the experiment. Experimental remits demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed idea.