Speech Jammer: The - Shuttup! - Gun

UPDATE 3/8/2012
You can read the interview here.

UPDATE 3/6/2012

I sent an 11 question email interview to Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara.  He has many projects and I just could not interview him on all of them.  I decided to stick with the Speech Jammer project with an option to talk about all of his, and his team's, projects on my podcast.
End UPDATE

Recently, I got in contact with a research scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki-ken. His name is Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara, and he and Dr. Koji Tsukada are the brainchildren of a recent invention we all wish we could use on those annoying babble chatters on the train, in the office, elevator, or lobby, or mother-in-laws that just won't shut up!

The device is called the Speech Jammer. As you can see by the image on the left from, Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara's website, it is designed to stop those annoying, interrupting, and long winded chatter boxes by cutting off their speech and boggling their minds. The person in the image I believe is none other than Dr. Koji Tsukada. Please visit Dr. Koji Tsukada's research website and see what other projects he is working on as well.

A Speech Jammer? Where do I get one? There are only two prototypes at the moment, but hopefully after my interview with Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara, or if I can get an interview with Dr. Koji Tsukada, they can be persuaded to get this thing into production so you can buy it!  

Just how does this thing work? The device accomplishes silence-of-the-lames by picking up the offending speech through a directional microphone, and feeding it back to the offender at a delay of about 0.2 milliseconds. This delay causes auditory feedback and induces a kind of stuttering behavior, but sadly, no pain or physical discomfort.  The speaker loses track of what they are saying and will have difficulty thinking about their next words.

The Speech Jammer is an amazing... um, tool, and I invite you all to visit Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara's website, where he even has a video of how it works. Also read his PDF paper that explains the project and research in detail. With any luck, I will post an interview with him over the next few weeks, and with a little more luck, I will convince him to talk about all of his amazingly creative projects on my podcast. I would like to see him get more funding for his inventive projects.

Stay Creative, Dr. Kazutaka Kurihara, it's guguguood ffu fufu ... ummm... for yayaya you! xD