Members of Sophia Embedded System R&D Group.
From now on, dumb people can even “talk” as long as they wear a pair of special gloves made by ECNU’s Sophia Embedded System R&D Group. On March 6, Sophia released their first pair of experimental gloves made with FingerSpeak, a software system of artificial speech technology for the dumb.
Last summer, Sophia made up of Zhang Yang, a postgraduate of School of Software Engineering, and several undergraduates began to develop FingerSpeak as a key item of “Elite Club Training Project”. With FingerSpeak, users, especially the dumb, with both hands in special gloves, can communicate with each other by entering text under particular circumstances by means of natural finger touch. With the sensors on the gloves, the signals of users’ finger movements can be recognized and processed by single-chip microcomputer (SCM) and then through Bluetooth be sent to mobile phones, which can finally read out phrases or sentences by automatically analyzing and recording words.
According to Sophia members, FingerSpeak has two major merits. One is its convenience and simplicity. As most people have the habit of touching other fingers with the thumb, there would be no technological problem for the dumb to “talk” through natural finger touch. The other is its diversity of software patterns. In mobile phone interface, users can choose various sounds and even imitate the sound made by musical instrument, enabling “FingerSpeak” to bring more surprise.
“FingerSpeak” has its operating rules. The five fingers of the left hand from the thumb to the little finger are marked respectively by L1, L2, L3, L4, L5; the ones of the right hand from the thumb to the little finger are marked by R1, R2, R3, R4, R5. The touching style of the left hand is as follows: L1+L2, L1+L3, L1+L4, L1+L5, L1+L2+L3; the one of the right hand is as follows: R1+R2, R1+R3, R1+R4, R1+R5, R1+R2+R3. According to the rule, different combinations and orders can represent the ten figures from 0 to 9 as well as 26 English letters.
“It is necessary to memorize the operating rules, which is similar to learning five stroke input.” said Ju Xiaoming, an associate professor from School of Software Engineering and the instructor of the project.
Written by: Yao Run
Edited by: Liu Jinyu
