Gloves that allow you to "hear" sign language
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:06 am
Every day, about half a million Americans with hearing impairments use American Sign Language (ASL). But it has a drawback: It allows people who cannot hear to communicate with each other, but it prevents those who can hear from speaking. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed a promising solution to the problem: an interpreter that can be worn like a regular glove.
Inside the device are elastic wires in a polyester braid that track bangladesh number data finger movements. Within a second, the built-in processor translates these movements into one of over 600 characters with 98.63% accuracy. The results are transmitted via Bluetooth to a mobile app that reads the words aloud.
at UCLA who led the research, says he decided to create the glove after trying to talk to a friend who is deaf. He studied other solutions for ASL translation and found them to be imperfect. Visual recognition systems need the right lighting to decipher finger movements. Devices that recognize gestures by tracking electrical impulses through the skin need precise sensor placement to avoid skewing the results.
Meanwhile, the glove solves UX problems. To use it, you just need to put it on (Chen also tried adding additional sensors to the face, because facial expressions also matter in ASL - this is a related drawback of many sign language decoding projects that do not take it into account). The glove is also cheap to make. The lab version cost just $50. Chen believes that mass production will significantly reduce the price. Compared to other assistive devices, such as hearing aids, wheelchairs and special devices, $50 is almost a pittance.
The project does not address the main claim of opponents of ASL translation, who believe that the deaf community is a culture "in itself" that does not need to change its behavior to respond to those who can hear.
Chen predicts that it could take another three to five years of “tuning” before the technology is ready for mass production, during which time the glove could learn to translate sign languages beyond English (another shortcoming of previous projects). This project not only makes ASL understandable to more people, but also demonstrates the possibilities of wearable technology.
Inside the device are elastic wires in a polyester braid that track bangladesh number data finger movements. Within a second, the built-in processor translates these movements into one of over 600 characters with 98.63% accuracy. The results are transmitted via Bluetooth to a mobile app that reads the words aloud.
at UCLA who led the research, says he decided to create the glove after trying to talk to a friend who is deaf. He studied other solutions for ASL translation and found them to be imperfect. Visual recognition systems need the right lighting to decipher finger movements. Devices that recognize gestures by tracking electrical impulses through the skin need precise sensor placement to avoid skewing the results.
Meanwhile, the glove solves UX problems. To use it, you just need to put it on (Chen also tried adding additional sensors to the face, because facial expressions also matter in ASL - this is a related drawback of many sign language decoding projects that do not take it into account). The glove is also cheap to make. The lab version cost just $50. Chen believes that mass production will significantly reduce the price. Compared to other assistive devices, such as hearing aids, wheelchairs and special devices, $50 is almost a pittance.
The project does not address the main claim of opponents of ASL translation, who believe that the deaf community is a culture "in itself" that does not need to change its behavior to respond to those who can hear.
Chen predicts that it could take another three to five years of “tuning” before the technology is ready for mass production, during which time the glove could learn to translate sign languages beyond English (another shortcoming of previous projects). This project not only makes ASL understandable to more people, but also demonstrates the possibilities of wearable technology.