Amazing! Manipal Students Design a ‘Talking Glove’ for the Speech/Hearing Impaired

Had it not been for sign language, people with hearing and speech disabilities would have continued to exist like mere spectators but really an active participant.

Except for family members and friends of those with the impairment, who voluntarily take the initiative of learning the language, only a very tiny percentage of individuals across the world have otherwise taken the effort of learning the language, with the selfless aim of making the world a lot more inclusive for the differently-abled folks.

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Enter the scene, a team of engineering students from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) with a brilliant innovation that can bridge the gap between speech and hearing impaired folks and the world.

The team, which comprises Dhruv Sharma, Rahul Shewani and Rohit Sarkar, has devised a ‘talking glove’, that has the ability of converting gestures and signs to spoken English!

The innovation with its amazing possibilities managed to bag the second prize at the MIT Innovation Challenge and will soon find financial backing for developing working prototypes.

“People who cannot speak/hear make use of the sign language to communicate, but most people cannot understand the sign language or don’t know how to use it. We are inspired to change lives of these people, to make them an integral part of society,” Dhruv Sharma told Bangalore Mirror.

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Dhruv further explained that the glove converts gestures and signs of American Sign Language into spoken English output and helps an impaired person communicate with the world as well as improve their quality of life.

“A person using the sign language can simply wear the glove and execute the movement and gestures. The glove will interpret the meaning of signs or gestures and generate a speech output for the same,” he added.

The team intends to make the glove more compact and develop a pertaining Android application.

If this amazing innovation by the students is able to enter the commercial market, it could act as a boon for not just those with speech and hearing impairments but also those who would like to be a part of their world.

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