Innovative high-tech gloves translates sign language into complete spoken words

Prize-winning device may eventually have the potential to help hundreds of millions of hearing-impaired people around the world.

Last May we reported on three Cornell University engineering students who had developed a high-tech glove that translated hand gestures into spoken letters.

Then in June we presented a story about students at the University of Houston who developed a prototype sign language translation device that converted motions and hand shapes into complete audible words.

Now, with the same basic idea in mind, a group of university students from the Computer Academy "Step" in Zaporozhye, Ukraine have developed the next generation of gloves that would allow a wearer to have their sign language instantly translated into speech.

The four students, Anton Stepanov, Anton Posternikov, Maxim Osika, all programmers, and Valeriy Yasakov, a designer, otherwise known as QuadSquad, invented their sensory gloves as part of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition in Sydney, Australia, winning this year’s top prize for their high-tech innovation.

The gloves are fitted with flex sensors, touch sensors, gyroscopes and accelerometers (as well as some solar cells to increase battery life). They call their product Enable Talk and the whole system then connects to a smartphone over Bluetooth.

“After some interaction with hearing-impaired athletes at our school we’ve got an idea to create a device that would help them to communicate more fully with the rest of the world. That is how the Enable Talk project was born. We hope that our solution will help a lot more people,” said the QuadSquad team.

By Alex Dupont
Marketing Communications Specialist
Language Translation, Inc.

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