Entrepreneurs Aarush Yadav and Arnav Kumar have raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding for their startup, The Subvocal Company, to develop eyeglasses that enable users to communicate with computers without speaking aloud. Backed by Y Combinator, the San Francisco-based wearable technology company uses radio-frequency sensing to detect micro-facial movements made during silent speech and translate them into text in real time.
“We’ve raised $1.3M from YC & Afore Capital so you never have to type or speak again,” Aarush Yadav tweeted while sharing a video of the product.
He said that he and his co-founder developed the product because they think “Typing is slow. Talking into your computer is awkward.” He claimed that the glasses fix those issues.
Yadav continued, “Our glasses give you the speed of speech without you making a sound or touching a keyboard. It tracks your internal speech muscles with non-contact sensing and decodes silent, almost invisible mouthing into text at more than 200 words/min.”
He shared a link to the pre-order page, which shows the wearable tech is priced at $699 and available for $499 for the “early birds”.
A video shared by the co-founder demonstrates the product in action. In the clip, one of the co-founders wears the glasses and silently mouths words, which are instantly converted into digital text on a connected computer screen.
{{/usCountry}}A video shared by the co-founder demonstrates the product in action. In the clip, one of the co-founders wears the glasses and silently mouths words, which are instantly converted into digital text on a connected computer screen.
{{/usCountry}}What do the glasses do?
According to the company website, the wearable technology lets users “Write at the speed of speech, without speaking out loud.” One can message, take not, or have a conversation with an AI agent using the glasses but without making a sound.
How does it work?
The company says, “Subvocal decodes almost-invisible subtle, silent mouthing into text at 200+ WPM,” adding that it uses “deliberate silent articulation”.
“You mouth words as subtly as you want, without producing audible speech. Up close, someone may notice slight movement, but at normal conversational distance it’s designed to be invisible.”
Do the glasses use a camera?
“No. Subvocal does not use or require cameras for silent speech input. There’s no video or camera-based lip reading, and you don’t need to turn on your computer’s webcam,” reads the statement on the company website.
The makers claim that the device does not rely on hearing the user's voice, so it is not affected by surrounding noise such as traffic, music, or other environmental noise. They also assure that the product doesn’t listen in on the user or record them.