Special Glove converts Sign Language to Sound Through Cell Phone

Another interesting story today.  If this thing is going to work they have a lot of work to do.  That glove is gigantic, and I'm not really sure if the Deaf community would be hugely interested (for those of you who are Deaf or hard of hearing, what do you think about this?).  From the Pittsburgh Gazette:

It knows only 32 words, but someday, it may get a grip on the entire human vocabulary.

It is a sensor-equipped glove, known as HandTalk , that can translate gestures into spoken words on a cell phone. It was developed by students at Carnegie Mellon University as part of a class research project.

Three of the four team members, senior computer engineering students Bhargav Bhat, Hemant Sikaria and Jorge L. Meza , demonstrated the prototype yesterday at Carnegie Mellon's "Meeting of the Minds" expo of undergraduate research projects.

Someday, the young inventors hope, it may allow deaf people to communicate with those who don't know American Sign Language by having their cell phones speak their words aloud.

"That could be a big advantage" for hearing-impaired people, Mr. Bhat said. "It would cut out the need for an interpreter."

For now, the glove uses a primitive language system invented by the student team, which also includes master's student Wesley Jin .

When the glove is held in a fist, for instance, the cell phone says "Good morning." When the index finger, second finger and thumb are extended, it says, "I'm having a good time." And when the index finger, little finger and thumb are held out, it politely says, "Thank you for your time."

Underneath the hood of this system are several relatively inexpensive pieces of technology.

Along each finger and the thumb of the glove are flexor strips, which change their electrical resistance, depending on how much the digits are curled. The positions of the fingers are read by a chip and transmitted wirelessly to a cell phone, which is loaded with a vocabulary that corresponds to the gestures.

The cell phone then types the words as text messages, and an off-the-shelf program translates them into speech.

Mr. Bhat said HandTalk so far has been able to learn 15 of the 26 letters in the American Sign Language alphabet.