A student from Goldsmiths, University of London has created a smart glove capable of turning sign language into text as well as speech. The wireless SignLanguageGlove by Hadeel Ayoub is ready to hit its fourth prototype, and will cost almost £255 to manufacture. But the designer is hoping the visually impaired or those who find communicating difficult, won’t have to pay for them. She wishes for schools and companies to buy them for their charges and employees instead.
Ayoub’s first prototype of the smart gloves consisted of a circuit with flex sensors, a micro-controller board, an accelerometer to detect hand orientation and a graphic numerical display. It could convert gestures into letters on a screen. With 5 flex sensors in place for each of the fingers, the system worked by recognizing bends and curvatures in order to report the values to a serial monitor. Software also needed to be formulated for figuring out what letters must be shown on the panel, based on the signals it received.
The next version of the SignLanguageGlove incorporated better software and smaller components. It was faster and more durable too. The latest iteration which happens to be the third prototype, embeds a text-to-speech chip. Since Ayoub felt that having visible wires on the glove would intimidate users or give the impression of being fragile, most of its hardware is sewn into the lining. She wants its next version to be compatible with smartphones and tablets via an app which can receive the wearable’s output over Wi-Fi.
The smart glove was exhibited at the recently held Goldsmiths MA/MFA Computational Arts end-of-degree show. As mentioned above, Ayoub is gearing up to build a fourth prototype of it. She intends for handier features to be added to it including an LED light, a speaker, a translation option and a motion sensor.