A Portable Tool for Deaf and Hearing Impaired People

Abstract

A portable system for deaf and hearing impaired people has been developed based on the IEEE 1451 sensor standards and other related technologies to minimize their communication difficulties with the ordinary society. The system is comprised of two main modules. One of the modules is performing gesture recognition by capturing Sinhala sign language symbols from a deaf or hearing impaired person using a specially developed smart glove which is embedded with a 3-D accelerometer, a digital gyroscope and flex sensors complying with the IEEE Smart Sensor Standards. The smart glove is capable of capturing finger movements and hand movements. Arduino Mega controller system, containing Atmel ATmega2560 AVR microcontroller, was used to implement the Smart Transducer Interface Module (STIM). The captured signals were analyzed and related text and voice would be generated. The other module is processing human voice real-time using Sphinix-4 framework and generate corresponding text and displaying Sinhala sign language animations on an external display using an animated avatar. Generating animations was done by using Blender and JMonkey game engine.