Hacked Kinect Gets Sign Language Recognition

You can now use Kinect to help people learn American Sign Language. Researchers at Georgia Tech College of Computing are working on, pairing Microsoft's oft-hacked motion sensing camera with custom software that before required special colored gloves with wrist-mounted, 3-axis accelerometers. On a series of increasingly difficult tests, the software returned results with 100% accuracy, 99.98% accuracy, and 98.8% accuracy.

These promising results mean the team will be working on updates including a larger vocabulary which necessitates the need of "hand shape features." The initial proof-of-concept demo launched with a small vocabulary that excluded them in favor of broader gestural movements with the arms and body. We imagine that reported fourfold increase in Kinect image resolution would have a major benefit here, should Microsoft ever release it.

 

[Via Kinect Hacks]