Thursday, January 12, 2012

A sign language interpreter glove that links to your smartphone

From The Atlantic:

A team of three developers, Oleg Imanilov, Zvika Markfeld, Saron Paz, and Tomer Daniel, have developed a novel sign language interpreter glove.

The prototype glove, which was demonstrated at a recent Google developers event in Tel Aviv, incorporates a number of sensors to detect hand gestures which are then interpreted via a smartphone app to produce text.

Flex sensors embedded in the fingers of the glove detect finger position while an accelerometer and tilt sensor detect hand movement and orientation as demonstrated in the video below.

It is not clear how many gestures the system can interpret and the device would seem to be an early proof of concept. However, it could offer a simple and cheap interface for people not versed in sign language to easily communicate with the hearing-impaired.