Gesture Detection Based Device for the Disabled
Science and Technology have made Human life addictive to comfort but still there exists an underprivileged group of people who are fighting for finding an innovative way that can make the process of communication easier for them. According to the World Health Organization, about 285 million people in the world are blind, 300 million are deaf and 1 million are dumb. According to census 2011, In India there are 1,640,868 citizens who can’t speak as well as 1,261,722 citizens who can’t listen. More than 70% of Deaf population of India is working in Government as well as Private sectors. For communication they are dependent on Sign Languages. In India most popularly Indian Sign Language is used. In rest of the population of India very few citizens are able to use Indian Sign Language, as they really don’t need to learn sign language. This causes a communication barrier between Deaf Dumb and Normal person. This leads to disqualification of hearing impaired from main stream of the society. To overcome this problem a communication assistant is required, to convert Sign Language to auditory speech. Round the world people who are deaf, mute or blind find it hard to communicate normally with people. This project investigates a new way that can be productize so that a new gadget can be developed that can bridge the gap in communication among differently abled people who suffer from any of the possible combinations of the disability of Blindness, Deafness and Dumbness. For this we are looking for some sort of wearable technology that can satisfy our purpose. The device focuses on eliminating this problem by providing a tool to assist the communication. Our target population is mostly well versed with ASL (American Sign Language) which is the convention followed worldwide. The device has a dataset loaded with words and alphabets that can be invoked by hand symbols/signs. The dataset can be altered by the user providing him/her with the option of personalizing the tool and enhancing the experience and utility.
In this project, we are going to propose a new wearable communication device in an effort to bridge the gap in the process of communication between the Blind, Deaf and Dumb people. The prototype will make use of the flex sensor and Arduino microcontroller to provide a means of communication to differently-abled people having one or all of the above mention disabilities. It is assumed that a person who is deaf is also dumb but vice versa is not true. The device can convert the hand gestures to desired letter/word/phrase and then display it on a 16*2 LCD as well as can send this letter/word/phrase to a mobile device using wireless communication for conversion of text to speech.