Taking motion sensing to all new heights, we now have a glove that can help deaf people communicate. The HandTalk has to be worn by the deaf person on his/her palm. The different palm positions viz. a fist, extended fingers, etc will be sensed by the glove through flexor pads which sense different resistances depending on the curl angle of the fingers. The glove will then synchronize with the cellphone to display the different gestures into text messages, ultimately getting it converted into speech via an off-the-shelf translation program. Thus, the deaf people can communicate with other people who don’t understand the American sign language. Although this very handy contraption is in the prototype stages and can just output 32 words, it will soon become capable of displaying more words. The underlying issue is the fact that the different people move the fingers at different angles which result in the calibration of the glove going haywire. For commercialization, the young team of inventors from Carnegie Mellon University need to somehow get over this hurdle. Let’s hope that this very useful invention sees the light of the day.
Via: textually
