An innovative glove translating sign language has been developed by second-year students of the Academic High School of the Bialystok University of Technology. Their solution won first place in the national competition Young Innovator 2022.
Ewa Karp, Paweł Buczyński, Jakub Kokoszkiewicz, Michał Łukaszuk and Konrad Olifier from the Academic Secondary School of the Bialystok University of Technology are the originators and creators of the Sensory Sign Language Translator, or STJM.
“I came up with the idea of building STJM after my mother, who is a police officer, told me about an intervention involving a mute person,” says Konrad Olifier, a student of mathematics, physics and computer science profile class. – Even though she had been trained in the basics of sign language, understanding each other was very difficult.
That’s why he and his classmates decided to create something that would be helpful in this type of situation. They decided it would be a glove.
Work on the project began in September 2021 during robotics classes led by teacher Grzegorz Nowik, the supervisor of the team of young inventors.
The glove is worn by a human. STJM works based on several sensors that collect information about the position of individual fingers, but also the entire hand. The collected data is then interpreted and converted into the sign alphabet. When the glove finally recognises the letters shown by the signer, it sends them to the phone (of a person who does not know sign language), where they are displayed on a special application, also written by students.
This solution allows for seamless communication between signers and non-signers. According to the authors, it can be used both for learning sign language and, for example, during emergency services interventions.
“In the student invention, communication-based on flashing words one letter at a time works stably,” says Grzegorz Nowik. – The plan is to build a second glove so that full words can be flashed with two hands. The team is made up of second-year students, so we have a lot of time, but as far as I know, the project will probably be finished after the holidays”.
The invention of the students has already been recognised by many experts. On 18 May they were awarded first place in the national Young Innovator 2022 competition, and their solution will be presented during the International Warsaw Invention Show (IWIS) in October.
Earlier, the Sensory Sign Language Interpreter won first place in the International Robotic Tournament in the freestyle category. The high school students also received the 1st Audience Award there.
The students were also winners of the El-Robo-Mech competition and advanced to the finals of the Technical Innovation and Invention contest and the Explory competition.