College students develop gloves "SignAloud" to automatically translate sign language

By reading and analyzing the hand movement of sign language, gloves that can translate sign language conversation and send it by voice "SignAloud"Developed by students of the University of Washington.

UW undergraduate team wins $ 10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that translate sign language | UW Today
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/12/uw-undergraduate-team-wins-10000-lemelson-mit-student-prize-for-gloves-that-translate-sign-language/

These Students Built A Glove That Translates Sign Language Into English | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
http://www.fastcompany.com/3059616/

SignAloud was developed by Thomas Plier and Mr. Nabid Azoji who are studying business science and aerospace engineering at the University of Washington. It is a device that is equipped with sensors and control devices on the wrist part and on each finger and can be used wirelessly.


When you wear SignAloud and speak sign language, it can be seen in the following movie how the translation is done automatically.

SignAloud: Gloves that Transliterate Sign Language into Text and Speech - YouTube


It is the pliers who wear SignAloud in hand.


When Pliers speaks in American style sign language, "I am Thomas, it is Navido that is next to us.Lemelson-MIT"It is an inventor who participated in the student competition of" The English translation is flowed from the speaker according to the movement of the hand.


The initial prototype of SignAloud was made with cardboard and yarn, and it seems that the fabrication cost of the fabric made prototype is about 100 dollars (about 11,000 yen). Since Azoji was hardly able to talk languages ​​till the age of seven, I have the experience that communication had a barrier in early childhood. Azoji met with pliers at the university and it seems that it was decided to develop SignAloud using engineering technology learned at university. Azone said that "communication is the basic human right of human beings."


The way to install SignAloud is just to put it in the same way as general gloves.


SignAloud has a sensor to capture the motion of the hand embedded, and recognizes the position and motion of each finger based on X, Y, Z coordinates. Data is sent to the computer via Bluetooth, the computer recognizes and translates sign language movement, and English corresponding to sign language flows from the speaker.


Plier says, "A lot of sign language translation devices have already been developed, but it is not something that can be used everyday in everyday life, such as using video input or using a large-scale device that covers the arm or the whole body" And comments. "SignAloud is light and can be carried around, just put it in your hands, like a hearing aid or contact lens, it's a device that you can use easily every day," pliers says.


Azone said, "People talking with sign language can speak very fairly in sign language.SignAloud is not a tool for translating sign language speaker conversation into English, but with sign language speakers It is positioned as a tool to break down the barriers between English speakers and act as a bridge for communication. " However, because Sign Language has its own grammatical structure, SignAloud still has not been able to grasp the movement of all American sign language.

SignAloud won the Lemelson-MIT student competition, and the two got a prize of $ 10,000 (about 1.1 million yen). Based on criticism gained from outside, SignAloud plans to improve so that it can understand the context of deeper sign language. In parallel with the development of SignAloud, they also said that they are also studying for university exams.