ClothTalk: Conductive Cloth Microphone for GPU-Free, Real-Time Clear Talk in Noisy Environments

Author

Hiraki, Hirotaka and Kanazawa, Shusuke and Miura, Takahiro and Yoshida, Manabu and Mochimaru, Masaaki and Rekimoto, Jun

Abstract

Voice interaction faces significant challenges in privacy-sensitive contexts, as whispering degrades in noisy environments where nearby speech masks whispered input. We present ClothTalk, a flexible microphone system with a conductive fabric diaphragm that addresses this challenge through physical design rather than computational approaches. By incorporating a curved structure, ClothTalk achieves superior directivity and recognition accuracy compared to conventional microphones and speech enhancement software, even in environments with background noise exceeding 80 dB. By leveraging acoustic properties in the physical structure rather than computational processing, our system enables efficient voice enhancement on resource-constrained devices without requiring GPUs. User studies in office environments, walking scenarios, and public spaces demonstrate effective privacy-preserving voice interaction across diverse contexts. This work addresses critical challenges related to privacy, environmental adaptability, and social acceptability of voice interaction systems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3631752