Sign Language from a Robotic Hand

Posted 17 Jan 2006 at 04:55 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Japanese scientists have created a robot hand that can do sign language. You just type in and send the data to the hand's computer and it does the sign language. Right now its dictionary is limited to about 10 simple Japanese phrases and about 50 words. The two scientists came up with the idea when they visited a school for the deaf and wanted to communicate with the students there. They then envisioned a robotic hand that could translate their language into sign language that the students could understand. They studied a book about sign language and then created a robotic hand with 18 joints that could perform the necessary movements.