PlayStation Eye - Sound As Rich As Vision?

Speaking to Newsweek magazine about Sony's uber EyeToy, the PlayStation Eye, recently head of the Special Projects group of Sony Computer Entertainment US R&D (and father of EyeToy), professor Richard Marks was keen to point up some of the advantages of the system's sound as well as visual technology.

Here are some of the highlights.

On hands-free voice input
"My U.S. R&D colleague, Crusoe Mao, had already been working on research for voice input using microphone arrays, so his work was merged into the design. The hands-free voice input this enables may be the single most important feature of Playstation Eye.

"It allows the device to effectively "listen" in a certain direction. In our case, we would listen in the direction of the person playing the game.

"The device is especially good at removing ambient sounds like traffic and wind noises from outside, the whirring of fans, etc. Also, there is special processing to remove the game sounds generated by the PS3 itself.

The clean voice data provided to the PS3 could be used for chat or for speech recognition, or any other use that a game might have. And it easy for the player, since it doesn't involve wearing anything or configuring anything."

On Low-Light Visuals
"For Playstation Eye, we worked closely with Omnivision, our sensor chip partner, on a design that is counter to the mainstream trend of smaller pixels. In low-light conditions, this means that each sensor pixel is able to gather more of the available light and produce a better signal."

The full interview can be read here.