Hasta La Gadget!

A few months ago we saw a concept for a camera-based device that is meant to recognize sign language and translate it into spoken words. A Ukrainian-based team has something better: a working prototype of a smart glove with the exact same capability.

The quadSquad team won the 2012 Imagine Cup – Microsoft’s technology competition for students – for their invention, which they call EnableTalk. The glove has 15 flex sensors, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a compass, all manned by an onboard microcontroller. The glove sends input via Bluetooth to a custom app made for Windows smartphones, which will then interpret the data and output spoken language.

The brief demo below show the tester spelling “hello” letter by letter, which the app is able to translate after just a brief delay:

Head to EnableTalk’s official website for more information on the product. I tip my hat off to quadSquad; I hope the team succeeds in releasing a commercial version of their device.

[via CNET via Reddit]

If you’re have difficulty hearing or are deaf, going to the movies can be a challenge unless you manage to find a showing or a theater with special projected captions. Thanks to a new Sony technology, you can now view captions on any showing of a digitally-projected film, without requiring that everyone watch the captions.

Sony’s Entertainment Access Glasses contain a pair of tiny projectors which can superimpose captioning in front of just your eyes. The glasses offer a variety of adjustments for the size, color, position and language of the captions, providing flexibility for a variety of eyes and viewing conditions. In addition, the glasses can support 3D without another pair of lenses. While you might imagine these glasses are just a concept, they’re not. They’re already in production, and you can find them at some Regal Cinema locations already.

The glasses are currently compatible with Sony’s 4K Digital Cinemas, though it’s unlikely that they’ll ever work with other projection systems.