http://www.rdmag.com/articles/2016/04/gloves-speak-when-you-sign?et_cid=5259871&
In the United States, one in eight people over the age of 12 has hearing loss in both ears, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. For some, American Sign Language is the only means of communication. However, it’s hardly ubiquitous when it comes to the entire U.S. population.
Two University of Washington undergraduate students are looking to bridge that gap. Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, earlier this month, won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for their gloves that can translate sign language into text and speech.
“Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses,” Pryor said in a statement.
Called “SignAloud,” the gloves contain sensors that record hand movements and shoot the data wirelessly to a central computer, which matches the movement with a known gesture. The corresponding word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.
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“Our purpose for developing these gloves was to provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” Azodi said in a statement. “The idea initially came out of our shared interest in invention and problem solving. But coupling it with our belief that communication is a fundamental human right, we set out to make it more accessible to a larger audience.”
“SignAloud” is less bulky than some of its predecessors, one of which covers the entire forearm.
“The gloves can also be commercialized for use in many fields, including medical technology to monitor stroke patients during rehabilitation, gesture control of remote devices, and enhanced dexterity in virtual reality,” according to Lemelson-MIT. “The gloves offer superior resolution and accuracy to other hand-gesture recognition devices currently available including the Myo Armband and the Leap Motion.”
Azodi and Pryor, and the other winners of the various Lemelson-MIT Student Prizes, won from an applicant pool that included 77 other colleges and universities.
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