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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.'"

1 of 135 comments (clear)

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

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