Hadeel Ayoub, a student at the University of London, has created an
incredible smart glove that can translate sign language into written or
spoken words. The glove does this in real-time, while the wearer is
signing. The brilliant device is wireless: the glove transmits its
interpretation of the hand motions to a processor which displays the
full text on a screen.
It’s also capable of reading out the
translation, so that hearing listeners can immediately understand what
the person who’s signing is saying. This advanced text-to-speech feature
will enable blind people to “hear” deaf or mute people who are signing.
In
a version of the smart glove that she is working on now, Hadeel is
making the glove capable of transmitting directly over Wifi to a
smartphone app. When this is released, a deaf person will be able to
talk on the phone by signing. Hadeel said that she’d like to develop a
glove that could do translation into multiple languages simultaneously.
Creating a glove scaled down for children is the next challenge.
