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Robotic Hand Translates Speech into Sign Language

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the look-ma-no-hands dept.

usermilk writes "Robot educators Keita Matsuo and Hirotsugu Sakai have created a robot hand that translate the spoken word into sign language for the deaf. From the article: 'A microchip in the robot recognizes the 50-character hiragana syllabary and about 10 simple phrases such as "ohayo" (good morning) and sends the information to a central computer, which sends commands to 18 micromotors in the joints of the robotic hand, translating the sound it hears into sign language.'"

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Over Kill? by xoip · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Call me culturally insensitive but, why not simply translate speech to text?

  2. More Useful As Software by Afty0r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Would this not be more useful as software, able to render simple 3d hands with low microprocessor overheads, and preferably available for mobile phones and PDAs?

    Deaf people could carry a PDA, and when they need to find out what someone is saying, they can hold the PDA up like a microphone, and watch the screen, assuming the translation is at least reasonable accurate...
    Of course they could lipread too but some find that harder than others, and this could also be used eventually to cross language barriers?

    I imagine it's extremely hard to lipread a foreign language.