Smart glove translates sign language into text sending over Bluetooth to smartphone

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The development of a smart glove isn’t a new idea as researchers are pursuing the technology in different ways. This particular smart glove is said to be different in that it is low-cost and pliable. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, demonstrated its abilities in a video that shows the glove being used to sign. While the hand is gesturing the letters in sign language, the sensors on the glove are translating those movements into text which are being sent to a smartphone. Check out the short video below showing this ability.

Researchers say this technology has applications beyond helping the deaf community. Everything from remote surgery to diffusing bombs to virtual and augmented reality applications could benefit from this glove.

What’s different about the new glove is its use of extremely low-cost, pliable materials, says developer Darren Lipomi, a nanoengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. The total cost of the components in the system reported in the journal PLOS ONE cost less than US $100, Lipomi says. And unlike other gesture-recognizing gloves, which use MEMS sensors made of brittle materials, the soft stretchable materials in Lipomi’s glove should make it more robust.

The key components of the new glove are flexible strain sensors made of a rubbery polymer. Lipomi and his team make the sensors by cutting narrow strips from a super-thin film of the polymer and coating them with conductive carbon paint.

It’s always interesting to see new research and development on existing ideas and it’s exciting to see how it is all progressing. We may not be far off from having gloves such as those seen in Minority Report. Check out the source link for more in-depth coverage.

What do you think of this smart glove and it’s ability to translate sign language into text? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

[button link=”http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/computing/hardware/low-cost-pliable-materials-transform-glove-into-sign-to-text-machine” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Spectrum IEEE[/button][button link=”http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179766″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: PLOS One[/button]
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