Today we’re talking about smart speakers, which can be really smart and helpful depending on what you’re asking them to do (why won’t mine play the songs I want?!?)
But they only work if you can ask them at all.
A voice activated speaker needs a voice; without one, the user is out of luck.
Except that researchers at the University of Maryland are developing a way to activate the voice activated speaker without a voice.
They call it Scribe, and as the name suggests, it’s a digital stylus.
The user treats Scribe like a pen; the paper is the air, and the sensors inside the stylus can recognize which letters the user is writing.
Then Scribe turns the message into what the developers call “sonic ink” – high frequency signals that we can’t hear, but that smart speakers can recognize and will treat the same as a voice command.
(Though “Sonic ink” sounds like the name of somebody’s zine about Kim Gordon.)
In testing, Scribe transmitted the correct commands 94.1 percent of the time, which I’m pretty sure is a higher percentage than me just chattering into the air to my device.
And while a fully nonverbal user can rely on Scribe to do all of their smart speaker requests, users can still use voice commands if they want and they’re able; it’s not one or the other.
The next step is more testing, but the team behind Scribe is also thinking ahead to other jobs their device could do even beyond smart speakers.
For example, a user could take Scribe with them to the drive-thru and order food with “sonic ink.”
Though in that case you might also need a device that can help make sense of that loud, garbly message coming back at you through the drive thru.
Those speakers aren’t known for being that smart.
Designboom just wrote about a robotic wedding cake featuring a series of dancing gummy bears.
It’s called RoboCake, part of an initiative known as RoboFood and featured recently at Expo 2025 in Osaka.
The dancing gummy bears get their power from rechargeable edible chocolate batteries.
But how do they recharge the batteries if somebody already ate them?
An Alternative to Speech: Writing in the Air With ‘Sonic Ink’ (University of Maryland)
robotic wedding cake with dancing gummy bears moves using edible rechargeable batteries (designboom)
Tell your smart speaker to play our podcast, and then back the podcast on Patreon while you listen
