A New Navy Weapon Actually Stops You From Talking (interestingengineering.com) 134
The U.S. Navy has successfully invented a special electronic device that is designed to stop people from talking. Interesting Engineering reports: A form of non-lethal weapon, the new electronic device effectively repeats a speaker's own voice back at them, and only them, while they attempt to talk. It was developed, and patented back in 2019 but has only recently been discovered, according to a report by the New Scientist. The main idea of the weapon is to disorientate a target so much that they will be unable to communicate effectively with other people.
Called acoustic hailing and disruption (AHAD), the weapon is able to record speech and instantly broadcast it at a target in milliseconds. Much like an annoying sibling, this action will disrupt the target's concentration, and, in theory, discourage them from continuing to speak. As for the technical details of the device, a quick review of its patent is very interesting indeed. "According to an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure, a target's speech is directed back to them twice, once immediately and once after a short delay. This delay creates delayed auditory feedback (DAF), which alters the speaker's normal perception of their own voice. In normal speech, a speaker hears their own words with a slight delay, and the body is accustomed to this feedback. By introducing another audio feedback source with a sufficiently long delay, the speaker's concentration is disrupted and it becomes difficult to continue speaking."
Called acoustic hailing and disruption (AHAD), the weapon is able to record speech and instantly broadcast it at a target in milliseconds. Much like an annoying sibling, this action will disrupt the target's concentration, and, in theory, discourage them from continuing to speak. As for the technical details of the device, a quick review of its patent is very interesting indeed. "According to an illustrative embodiment of the present disclosure, a target's speech is directed back to them twice, once immediately and once after a short delay. This delay creates delayed auditory feedback (DAF), which alters the speaker's normal perception of their own voice. In normal speech, a speaker hears their own words with a slight delay, and the body is accustomed to this feedback. By introducing another audio feedback source with a sufficiently long delay, the speaker's concentration is disrupted and it becomes difficult to continue speaking."
Not new (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who ever talked on an encrypted radio channel in the military has experienced exactly this. Never understood why they didn't just mute your own voice in your ear.
You could always tell people who were new to it because they would talk slower and sloower as they unconsciously tried to get their voice in their ear to sync with their speech. After a while you mentally 'switched off' listening to your own voice.
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Also, anyone who has been around my sister. She does this all the time just to be annoying.
I have also experienced the echo many times on crappy military radios.
But as Snowhare says, you get used to it and tune it out.
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curious.
would this work at maralogo
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Wish I had mod points. You can add politicians, HP drones and marketing droids to the list.
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possibly.
but 130,000 dollars does
They reinvented TeamViewer? (Score:2)
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Hearing my speech echoed back with a slight delay does in fact discourage me from wanting to talk. A decade later and I still canâ(TM)t handle it when it happens. My pattern of speech just slurs and I canâ(TM)t get words out properly. So I would say this probably would work against civilians.
My response to reading TFS was visceral. This is an insidiously simple idea and I think it will be very, very effective. I realised I had unconsciously clamped my mouth shut just reading about it.
I have a difficult enough time with my partner echoing back to me what I've said incorrectly. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if it were faithfully repeated.
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This is similar to the delayed sound announcers in stadiums hear when they speak on the public address system. Experienced speakers learn to ignore the sound of their own voice on the PA system and just speak normally. I'm guessing this might confuse the casual target shouting at a crowd, but a prepared speaker should be able to train themselves to ignore it and render it ineffective.
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Re: Not new (Score:2)
So not just your average annoying sibling or stadium announcer feedback.
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Using it on politicians in front of the Klieg lights is the acid test. I'm not hopeful.
Which is why stage monitors exist (Score:3)
> This is similar to the delayed sound announcers in stadiums hear when they speak on the public address system.
This is why bands and others have speakers in stage pointing straight at them. So they hear the sound in real time, rather than delayed by echoing off the back wall of the auditorium.
It doesn't even need to be a stadium. It takes 88 milliseconds for sound to travel 100 feet. In a 50' room, going from the stage to the back wall is enough to start to notice. 88ms is about the time it takes to say
Wont work with my SO (Score:2)
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"Never understood why they didn't just mute your own voice in your ear."
It's to let you know that your transmitter is working as far as the output socket. The technical term is 'Sidetone'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It is in fact a huge missing factor in zoom and it's annoying as shit. Just a little bit of sidetone would stop people basically yelling during a call which is both annoying for those on the call and those three rooms over that aren't on the call !!!
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It is in fact a huge missing factor in zoom and it's annoying as shit. Just a little bit of sidetone would stop people basically yelling during a call
Preach, brother!
But it's not just zoom... it's all modern telecom devices, apparently. I would pay a small fortune for an app that returns sidetone to my mobile phones.
Or adds it as an option to any conferencing app.
I purchased an aviation headset to use for some critical communications because at least in aviation (as well as the military) they understand how critical a tool it is for effective communication.
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Decades ago this was conceived and implemented to treat stutterers. With the correct feedback delay this would force anyone to stutter. I am not sure of the detailed procedure, but I recall being asked to read from fresh text while the audio delay to my headphones was adjusted. I was not a stutterer, but this thing made me stutter like a machine gun.
This may be a 'prior art' that could invalidate this patent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I talked (once in awhile) over encrypted radio channels ship-to-ship in the Navy in the early 70s. I don't recall hearing my own voice. Are you referring to some newer system?
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Because people speak funny if they don't hear themselves. It's called sidetone, and it's often why cellphone speech is annoying - until recently most cellphones didn't do sidetone, so people would end up shouting and speaking really loud because they couldn't hear themselves.
Landlines have sidetone as a side effect of the way they operate. Cellphones don't unless you do it deliberately. This leaves the natural path between your mouth and
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Or use it as an "enhanced interrogation" tool.
Not sure if Saudis would be interested (they prefer using garden and power-tools in their work) but Chinese and Koreans might find it useful in their reeducation classes.
Koreans sure could use it in their k-pop torture factories. [youtube.com]
Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)
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We had some fun with this when first full-duplex sound cards finally arrived. It won't totally stop you from talking, but it makes you stutter uncontrollably.
Re:Prior Art (Score:5, Informative)
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Bell labs knew about the problem of delayed echo stopping people from speaking decades ago and spend an enormous amount of money designing echo suppressors for long distance telephone lines. As to the deliberate use of delayed echo stopping speech, I'm pretty sure I saw a demo of the effect at either a tech show or a science museum back in the 80's.
This, it's not a new phenomena and QI (a British topical panel show) demonstrated a device that uses this phenomena years ago. Was utterly ineffective on Alan Davies for some reason.
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I'm pretty sure I saw a demo of the effect at either a tech show or a science museum back in the 80's.
Saw this at a Science museum as a kid, probably 80s like you.
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As to the deliberate use of delayed echo stopping speech, I'm pretty sure I saw a demo of the effect at either a tech show or a science museum back in the 80's.
If you've ever been to The Ontario Science Centre in Toronto then you likely experienced it there. IIRC it used headphones and a delay of my own voice - I remember thinking that I was managing to talk (mostly) normally, but to my companions I was speaking gibberish.
That brings up the matter of prior art - TFS mentions a patent, but if the process was being publicly demonstrated decades ago it's hard to imagine that the patent would be defensible.
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Yep, nothing special, modern, surprising about this! I remember reading about it decades ago! I never tried it out (although it would be easy to do on a PC), but was quite familiar with it and conscious of the possible problem whenever capturing speech on a PC.
I used encrypted radios long long ago (AN/PRC-77 with a KY-38 addon), didn't notice any feedback issues. But then we were just using regular old GI handsets, no headphones, so maybe that made a difference?
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Prior art doesn't matter any more. USPTO has been First-to-File since 2013.
That’s not what first-to-file means. First-to-file still has to deal with prior art. First-to-file just means that if they are going to grant the rights to someone from a group of people who are trying to patent the same invention, the only one who is eligible to receive the patent is the one who was first to file. If it turns out someone else invented it first, depending on the conditions, that may still preclude the person who was first to file from receiving the patent.
Their greatest threat... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Their greatest threat... (Score:4, Informative)
This guy found out he can counter our weapon by putting his hands on his ears! Quick, kill him before he tells the others!
Simpler version of the device (Score:2)
A simpler version of the device with the same conversation-suppression effect is to have it follow your conversation and express empathy with what you are saying by saying "aha . . . aha . . . yup . . . mmhmm" the whole time you are speaking.
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Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) used a loop tape doing this in The Last Action Hero so he didn't have to listen to his ex-wife.
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What's All this AHAD stuff, anyhow ? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's All this AHAD stuff, anyhow ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Analyzing the circuit they have reproduced this from, it is not really the same thing at all.
The weapon rebroadcasts speech in several copies, at multiple time delays that have been found to be the most confusing psychologically. The "hassler" circuit just produces a high pitched oscillation (tone) that varied in frequency and intensity based on detected input sounds.
From the description, it would go off from not only speech, but loud typing noises, even - so it was triggered by any noise above a trigger threshold like "the clapper" circuit does, then it beeps in proportion.
The output has no resemblance to the input, it is simply noise (tone) modulated in proportion to the input volume level.
It's the equivalent of someone going "AHHH" loudly every time you tried to say something, like kids do to annoy their siblings or friends. Very annoying, but easily defeated with ear plugs!
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Thanks for the clarification. There was no way I could even understand the circuit, much less analyze it.
Easily defeated (Score:3)
with some noise cancelling headphones.
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Elementary (Score:2)
Anybody who's ever had an strong echo on a phone line knows that effect.
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Anybody who's ever had an strong echo on a phone line knows that effect.
I get it a lot when I call my father's cell phone.
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"patented back in 2019... only recently discovered (Score:3)
Their concentration was disrupted by the weapon .. (Score:2)
.. ;)
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Hell, apparently nobody's even paying attention to science news. I remember the reports about demonstrations.
By "discovered" I think they meant an intern "discovered" it when looking though the old-news archives for something to drive clicks.
useless (Score:2)
doesn't affect anyone with some training.
take sound engineers... they're used to hearing echo , and even hearing multiple conversations at the same time.
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Radio hosts are similar. It has to be a learned behavior; I freeze if I have a perceptible audio echo delay.
Fake news! (Score:1)
Er,... (Score:1)
... where does the "weapon" aspect come in?
Re: Er,... (Score:3)
Echo (Score:2)
So, it's like when you forgot to turn "echo" off in a terminal emulator like Telix (That was some time ago, i think miniterm is somewhat based on it)...
Like a science museum exhibit? (Score:2)
However, once you realize what is happening, you can concentrate and ignore the incoming feedback. It feels like trying to draw a picture with your eyes closed, but it works.
It's a _navy_ weapon (Score:2)
One has to wonder - how does a navy imagine they would apply this in _naval_ warfare?
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One has to wonder - how does a navy imagine they would apply this in _naval_ warfare?
Little known fact - whales are quite the Chatty Cathys.
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Could be useful in peacekeeping and anti-piracy (Score:2)
Naval missions are many and complex, with increasing public expectations of avoiding collateral damage.
Naval and Marine combined operations are historically quite common.
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One has to wonder - how does a navy imagine they would apply this in _naval_ warfare?
Presumably they will use it to end interminable meetings so that they can get away from a pointless discussion and back to running their ship.
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Not a new Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I have seen this demonstrated on Qi
Alan Davies could talk through it, while the rest of the panel could not.
Disorientate/disorient (Score:1)
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subs (Score:1)
finally safe to have women on board of submarines then
Could be interesting in schools! (Score:2)
How to shut up that noisy class rogue!
Disable heroes and villains (Score:3)
I wondered what this 'weapon' is needed for, and then it hit me. Sure, most of the time you want to stop bullets and such, not talking, but there are people who must quip before they shoot, as we know well from movies, and the best way to disable them completely is to silence them.
Japanese researchers did it 9 years ago. (Score:3)
I heard it here first...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Just kick him in the balls. (Score:1)
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Which I learned somewhere was a BS premise as flaking graphite from flammable pencils could cause issues, also turns out the Russians ordered the same pressurized pens that were developed for NASA, and got the same bulk discount. So NASA went from paying $128.89 for pencils to $2.39 per pen instead. Don't know if you recall but the pencil price in the 1960s was bad PR and people were upset NASA spent so much on pencils.
Drunk-Works? (Score:2)
Somewhere our military has a skunk-works-project building full of crazy clowns who dream up shit weapons like this, and the Gay Bomb and Halitosis Bomb. [wikipedia.org] I wonder if they got their start on Road Runner cartoons dreaming up ACME products?
They tried this in Afghanistan (Score:2)
and neither of these devices had any effect?
Laughable (Score:1)
It might work on male soldiers, but not on female ones, they can talk for hours without listening to any other sound, they won't be bothered by this. :-)
Patented??? (Score:2)
I saw this demonstrated over 30 years ago (Score:2)
In the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in Griffith Park in San Francisco.
The demonstration was a phone booth with some text posted on a plaque next to the phone.
The challenge was to pick up the phone and, while holding it to one's mouth and ear in the normal manner, read the text into the phone. The voice was sent back to the ear after about 1s delay. It was extremely difficult to complete the challenge.
I've also experienced the same effect recently during an online meeting. One of the attendees
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I don't think so. There may have been an exhibit in the Exploratorium, but it wasn't in Griffith Park, because Griffith Park is in Los Angeles, not San Francisco.
Really? (Score:2)
Well known effect.
Demonstrated on TV back in the 2000's on the TV show QI.
You can quickly train yourself to continue, and anyone used to public speaking, radio broadcast, telephone switchboard operation, etc. is already pretty immune to it.
It's a pretty crap weapon, using a very well-known and ineffective mechanism.
They had this already, no? (Score:2)
> The main idea of the weapon is to disorientate a target so much that they will be unable to communicate effectively with other people.
Isn't that the purpose of the Navy command structure?
How is this a "weapon"? (Score:2)
Evil weapon (Score:2)
The US is supposed to be about Free Speech, and it makes a weapon to stop people from speaking?
I understand that there are a few circumstances when this might be useful for the military, but the clear potential abuses of this weapon (designed to violate the 1st amendment of the United States Constitution) far outweigh any legitimate uses.
What are they going to make next, a Rape gun? Perhaps a long distance Cocaine injection device?
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What are they going to make next, a Rape gun?
....and if they can make a Rape gun, the next step down the slippery slope will have them making a Murder gun!
Coping Strategies Needed (Score:2)
I can't believe the inventors haven't considered that ear plugs or noise-cancelling headphones could nullify their weapon. Or maybe go the extra yard and have a simple computer program running that could instantly access the right part of a pre-recorded version of the speech and play it while the stricken speaker just did his best to lip sync.
The Navy ... (Score:2)
"The swamp". Oh yeah, right.
Saw this in the 70's (Score:2)
There wer
This happens all the time on video calls (Score:2)
On many Zoom/Google Meet/etc. video calls, there's inevitably someone with a bad audio setup whose speaker output feeds back into their mic input, creating an echo for everyone else on the call. If you've ever tried to speak when someone else is echoing like this, it's extraordinarily disorienting.
The rise of video calls during the pandemic has only greatly exacerbated this.
Dogs barking (Score:2)
jamming at auditory level (Score:2)
Prior art (Score:3)
in WW2, US soldiers introduced chewing gum to Europe. Teenagers have been unintelligible ever since.
Now they just have to tie the victims hands, (Score:2)
One guy immune... (Score:2)
"Sir, I've been pointing this thing at him for an hour, and he's still talking non-stop. I think it might be broken."
"Put that thing away, I told you it wasn't going to work on Trump!"
I hear (Score:2)
I hear that womens groups are forming a coalition to stop this new tech
Speech Jammer (Score:2)
This is called a speech jammer and I had an app on my phone that could do it a literal decade ago. You can find dozens of apps in the app store of your preference that can do this. Enjoy. [google.com]
These are needed (Score:2)
We need these installed in front of every podium that politicians step in front of. We'd see a drastic uptick in government efficiency.
Explains the acronym (Score:2)
Yawn.. (Score:2)
When running linear sats, or listening to a repeater offset, there is a little delay and you slow down until you learn ignore it, or run a pair of headphones with. a direct feed from your microphone.
Now the phenomenon is even more common with SDR and remote listening via remote web sdr sites.
How do they target a particular person? (Score:2)
The psycho-acoustic effect of the delay well known. What is not well known is how you direct the delayed sound at a particular target, which the article implies this "weapon" would do. It is down to basic acoustic wave theory. To make a narrow radiation pattern, you need a radiator that is fairly big compared to the wavelength. Small radiators are omnidirectional or bidirectional. Say the lowest frequency needed for speech is 300 Hz (as in analog phones), then the wavelength is about three feet. You would n
They patented a zoom call with someone that has a (Score:2)
"patented" but just discovered? (Score:2)
Riiiight...
To be patented means to be openly published. The US Goverment can force an application to remain undisclosed, under the Invention Secrecy Act This stops a patent from being granted.
Not really new (Score:2)
I saw an entertainer use the technique on a particularly obnoxious couple that were talking profusely in the front row table. It did take them several minutes to notice he was repeating the conversation (while playing guitar -- not easy to do). Of course, it was a somewhat personal conversation :-).
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They can always cut the mike to the guests, so why would they need this 'new' invention. Oh, wait, you were talking about the hosts!