Students build glove to translate Mexican sign language into text and speech

Three university students in Mexico developed Señas a Voces, a glove that uses sensors and software to translate Mexican Sign Language into text or speech on a smartphone app.

César Santiago Luna Valle, Mario Chaidez Martínez, and Emiliano Acuña created the device to provide autonomy for people with hearing or speech disabilities. The glove contains a gyroscope to measure hand position and sensors to interpret finger movements.

This data travels through a programming code to a smartphone, where an application converts the movements into Spanish words. The developers aim to bridge a communication gap for the more than 2.5 million people in Mexico who are deaf or mute. While interpreters exist, the students want their tool to assist people in private or specific settings where an interpreter might not be available, such as at medical appointments, banks, or government offices.

The team is currently working on a feature to translate spoken Spanish back into sign language animations using a camera and specialized software. The team is collaborating with the Sonorensense organization Señas del Desierto to collect videos for training an artificial intelligence model. They are also developing a learning application to compile various regional signs, as the language changes between different parts of the country. The glove currently translates more than 100 words, including pronouns, numbers, verbs, and nouns.