Wearable Smart Glove for Speech and Hearing Impaired People

Wearable Smart Glove for Speech and Hearing Impaired People

Ajinkya Mhatre

M. Tech Scholar

School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

Pradnesh Hagawane

B. Tech Scholar

School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

Sarang Joshi*

Assistant Professor

School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

Pradnya Shinde

B. Tech Scholar

School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

Hrushikesh B. Kulkarni

Assistant Professor

School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

Sachin Patil

1. Tech Scholar

   School of Mechatronics Engineering Symbiosis Skills and Professional Univeristy, Pune(MH) India

   Abstract Sign language is used by hearing and speech impaired people for communication with normal people. In Sign language, impaired person perform hand gestures to communicate their message, but sometimes it becomes difficult to understand it by normal person. The main of this project is to solve this problem by developing a smart wearable hand glove. Impaired person may wear this glove and perform the hand gestures as per sign language. Further finger action will converted into specific sound which a normal person can easily understand.

   KeywordsSign language, speech and hearing impaired people, 3D printing, gloves.

   1. INTRODUCTION

      According to WHO (World Health Organization), more than 5% of worlds population i.e. around 466 million, (34million children and 432 million adults) are hearing and speech impaired. These people face difficulties to communicate their message to normal people. If impaired person doesnt know sign langauge then communication will be more difficult. Every country has their own mother toung and have differnet sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), Indian Sign Language (ISL) etc. for proper communication, impaired person needs special training to perform specific hand gestures for each alphabet. Though sign language is properly designed to pass proper message still normal person cannot understand it and this create a problem of communication between normal and impaired person [1-3].

      Radzi Ambar et al. have developed a wearable glove that converts sign language into text and speech. This device consist of ARM processor, flex sensors, accelerometer, LCD and speaker. The accuracy of this system was found 91% as per algorithm developed. This system was limited to American Sign Language detection [4].

      Rajamalli and Premalatha have developed an economical wearable hand glove which may help mute person or the person who lost his voice due to accident. This device can use sign language or user can customize it as per his need. This glove consist of microcontroller, Bluetooth module, Android app etc. [5]. Pooja et al. have developed a glove that translates sign

      language into spoken language using python code. This system consist of flex sensors, MPU-6050 and Raspberry-pi microcontroller [6]. Hardik et al. have proposed an interpreter which automatically converts sign language into audio output. The proposed system solves the problem and helps dumb people in communicating with the rest of the world at a low cost [7].

      After performing literature review, it is found that SLR system with audio output is available for foreign language but for Indian languages such as Marathi are not available. So as to solve this issue, a hand glove is designed and developed in this project which will convert hand gesture in to sound for Marathi sign language detection.

   2. PROPOSED SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

      Sign language is the main method for deaf-mute people, to communicate with society but not many people can understand sign language. So the question was How to help them and let more people understand their meaning So we made 'The wearable Smart gloves a voice device model', expecting to improve the efficiency of communication between the deaf- mute people and ordinary people to some extent. With the help of the voice device, the deaf-mute people can convert the gesture language expression to voice commands and makes it understandable to normal people, for reaching the purpose of communicating with normal people. With regard to hardware components, the glove-based recognition system is composed of three main units, input unit, processing unit, and output unit.

      Fig. 1. The main hardware components of the glove-based system.

      1. Input Unit

         A flex sensor is a kind of sensor that is used to measure bending, therefore it is also named a bend sensor. This sensor works on the bending strip principle which means whenever the strip is bend then its resistance will be changed. There are 5 flex sensors connected to the microcontroller.

         Fig. 2. Flex sensor connection (Input Unit)

      2. Processing unit

         The microcontroller is the main component of the system that is accountable for collecting data the data from the input unit (sensors) provided by the hand gesture and performing the necessary processing of these data to recognize and translate the sign to the output unit (Audio unit) to be presented in the final stage. A microcontroller processes all signal receive from a flex sensor and then give an output via a speaker. After bending a flex sensor gives some Analog values, that value processing in the microcontroller with help of C code in Arduino IDE Software.

      3. Output unit –

         The output unit plays an important role in achieving the best accuracy of devices implemented in the field of sign language recognition (SLR)

         Fig. 3. Output Unit

   3. CAD MODELLING OF SYSTEM

Fig. 4. Hand Golves

Fig. 5. Finger Grip

Fig. 6. Finger Grip

Fig. 7. Actual Photo of person wearing gloves

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

As we normal people can express our feelings via language but deaf-mute people are not able to express their thoughts, and needs through language. Its become difficult for them in daily life.

Sign language is the main method for deaf-mute people, to communicate with society but not many people can understand sign language. So the question was How to help them and let more people understand their meaning, So we made 'The wearable Smart gloves a voice device model', expecting to improve the efficiency of communication between the deaf- mute people and ordinary people to some extent.

With the help of this system, the deaf-mute people can convert the gesture language expression to Marathi voice commands and makes it understandable to normal people, for reaching the purpose of communicating with normal people.

This project is useful for deaf-dumb people to live a normal life like normal people. We develop our own sign for mostly use sentences in daily life and useful sentence when deaf-dump people go somewhere its helpful to communicate with others.

REFERENCES

[1] The Ministry of Home Affairs, Webpage- https://www.ijcaonline.org/archives/volume118/number13/20802-3485 visited on 30/10/2022.

[2] Indian Sign Language Portal, https://indiansignlanguage.org/, visited on 30/10/2022.

[3] Bajpai, Dhananjai, Uddaish Porov, Gaurav Srivastav, and Nitin Sachan. "Two way wireless data communication and american sign language translator glove for images text and speech display on mobile phone." In 205 Fifth International Conference on Communication Systems and Network Technologies, pp. 578-585. IEEE, 2015.

[4] Ambar, Radzi, Chan Kar Fai, Mohd Helmy Abd Wahab, Muhammad Mahadi Abdul Jamil, and Ahmad Alabqari Maradzi. "Development of a wearable device for sign language recognition." In Journal of physics: conference series, vol. 1019, no. 1, p. 012017. IOP Publishing, 2018.

[5] Verma, Ms Pallavi, S. L. Shimi, and S. Chatterji. "Design of smart gloves." International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT) ISSN (2014): 2278-0181.

[6] Narsale, Sonal, Pooja S. Bhore, Neha D. Londhe, Prachi S. Patel, and Diksha Thanambir. "Smart Gloves for Deaf and Dumb Students." International Journal of Progressive Research in Science and Engineering 1, no. 8 (2020): 30-40.

[7] Rewari, Hardik, Vishal Dixit, Dhroov Batra, and N. Hema. "Automated sign language interpreter." In 2018 Eleventh International Conference on Contemporary Computing (IC3), pp. 1-5. IEEE, 2018.