Automated lip reading to help tackle crime

Universities and Home Office working on development project

Lip reading could help the police fight crime

The University of East Anglia (UEA) is leading a project to develop lip-reading systems with crime-fighting potential.

UEA hopes to develop a system capable of translating video footage of lip motions into text.

It is working with Surrey University and the Home Office Scientific Development Branch on the three-year project.

The development team will build on work carried out at the UEA to develop speech-reading systems and will incorporate face and lip tracker technology developed by the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at Surrey University.

Richard Harvey, senior lecturer at UEA’s School of Computing Sciences, says the Home Office is interested in looking into any system that could help police gather information or evidence about criminals.

‘The number of trained lip readers is falling as sign language is increasingly preferred. Human lip reading is already used in court, but it is controversial and prone to error. With an automated system you can know the error rate,’ he said.