One of the challenges mothers face in having a newborn is trying to guess what their babies actually want to say. With no one really seems to understand baby talk, Taiwanese scientists found a solution and created an app that can distinguish the different crying sounds babies make.
The Infant Cries Translator is a creation by scientists from the National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin. It can reportedly distinguish four separate cries babies make. The latest invention allegedly works by recording the sounds and then comparing them to a wide database.
The researchers spent 2 years to gather about 200,000 different crying sounds from nearly 100 newborn babies. They uploaded the audio to form a huge online database.
Researchers said that the app can immediately decode a baby's crying sound within 15 seconds. They further claimed that among infants below 2 weeks old, the app shows a 92 percent accuracy rate, thus aiding mothers determine whether their newborn is hungry, in pain, sleepy or wants a diaper change.
However, as the baby gets older, the less precise the app becomes. Lead author Chang Chuan-Yu said that for babies aging 1 and 2 months old, app accuracy level declines to 84 to 85 percent. And for babies 4 months old, accuracy level declines at 77 percent.
Furthermore, use of the app for babies past 6 months can be a little useless as creators claim that babies are now more affected with their environment. Nevertheless, it can still be helpful especially for new mothers.
The app's machine learning algorithm allows parents, based on their feedback, to personalized its configuration as well. The database is regularly updated to a Cloud Drive.
"After the differentiating process, the analysis result of the sound would be transferred to Mum's mobile phone. So Mum can depend on the actual situation to determine whether the analysis result is correct or not, to make a revision for the app," Chang said.
Since early this year, the app Infant Cries Translator is available for download both on iOS users App Store and Android users Google Play at $2.99.
