Robotic Hand Translates Speech into Sign Language

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.'"

Comments

Over Kill?

[xoip]

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

Re:Over Kill?

[tpgp]

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

Because signing is the native 'tongue' for most deaf people - and it is easier for them to communicate using sign language (over text) - just as its easier for you to understand speech (over text).

Basically - the same reason that some British TV (and undoubtedly many other channels around the world) have a signer translating the news rather then scrolling text.

Picture of robotic hand

[commodoresloat]

signing "I'll be back"

This gives a whole new meaning

[sikandril]

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "talk to the hand"

it's about form factor

[commodoresloat]

Would this not be more useful as software?

Yes but not nearly as intimidating. Who's going to get their lunch money taken -- deaf kid with a PDA, or deaf kid with a giant robot hand?

Re:How to sign First Post?

[tpgp]

Good lord! I imagine the Japanese language with its 1945+ character alphabet is hard enough to learn; learning Japanese sign language must really suck.

The relationship between a language & sign language does not work like that.

From the wikipedia sign language page

A common misconception is that sign languages are somehow dependent on oral languages, that is, that they are oral language spelled out in gesture, or that they were invented by hearing people

and

On the whole, deaf sign languages are independent of oral languages and follow their own paths of developmental. For example, British Sign Language and American Sign Language are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of Britain and America share the same oral language.

You know what would really spoil those deaf kids is, instead of a robot doing sign language, a robot that shows images or words based on what a speaker says.

That doesn't really sound like a robot, but speech recognition software connected to a teleprompter (or monitor)

Recognziing Sign Language

[SWroclawski]

There's a researcher at Gallaudet working on the other side of this equation with a system designed to recognize sign langauge, which seems like a much harder problem.

ASL isn't like English in that there are always specific words- a lot of it has to do with spacial context (where in the signing space the sign was made) and a whole class of signs that don't translate directly into words (they're hand shapes which can translate into an event or a description of an object or set of objects).

And, as the research page shows, facial expressions and even facial movements can be part of a sign.

Of course, this is American Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language may be very different.