Some folks just have the gift of language, picking up the new language with ease, navigating through all the mazes that quaint grammatical rules throw at them with flying colors. Well, sign language is a totally different ballgame, and a trio of engineering students from Cornell University have come up with the future forward Sign Language Translator glove as part of their final project. This prototype glove will employ the ingenious use of accelerometers, contact sensors and flex sensors to actually perform a translation of what is deemed as complex finger gestures from the American Sign Language alphabet into spoken letters. In fact, American Sign Language is the sixth most “spoken” language in America, making this unique glove a winner right from its conception.
The flex sensors, contact sensors, and accelerometers will function in tandem to receive information in three dimensions, gathering as much data as possible on each finger’s position and the hand’s motion so that it can tell the difference between letters. The subsequent translation will be sent to the base station, where it will then display as well as pronounce the letter, while interfacing with the computer. In order to spur on the aspiring sign language student, there is a game on the computer itself that tests the user’s ability to sign – a neat way of using it for sign language education, no?
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