The handheld device contains sensors that run along the four fingers and thumb to identify each word, phrase, or letter as it is done in American Sign Language.
Those signals are sent wirelessly to a smartphone, which is translated into spoken words at the rate of one word per second.
The glove does not translate British Sign Language, the other dominant sign language in the English-speaking world, which is used by approximately 151,000 adults in the United Kingdom, according to the British Association of the Deaf.
The researchers also added adhesive sensors to people’s faces they used to test the device, between the eyebrows and one side of the mouth, to capture facial expressions that are part of American sign language.
Chen said the device is lighter than portable systems developed in previous attempts to create live sign language translation kits.
More than 70 million deaf people use more than 300 sign languages worldwide.
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