Showing posts with label Compass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Compass. Show all posts

November 3, 2012

Sign Language That Really Talks

There are over 40 million deaf or hearing disabled people in the world.

Many of these people suffer from not being understood by others and feel isolated. 

Four Ukranian graduate students have created the answer for them called Enable Talk--these gloves translate sign langauge into sound. 

The gloves have sensors including compass, gyroscope, and accelerometer that captures the wearer's sign language. This is then transmitted via Bluetooth to an smartphone app that matches the sign pattens to those stored (and which can also be programmed/customized) and translates it into words and sounds. 

Enable Talk gloves won the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 student technology competition, and was named as one of Time Magazine's Top 25 Best Innovations of 2012. 

For $175 these gloves are an amazing value for the hearing impaired who just wants to be communicate and be understood by others. 

This is a great advance for the disabled, and I'd like to see the next iteration where the gloves have the translation and voice mechanism and speakers built in, so the smartphone and app isn't even needed any longer--then the communication is all in the gloves--simple, clean, and convenient! ;-)