Hearing loss affects around 20 percent of the United States population to some degree, and for many of these people, American Sign Language (ASL) is their main form of communication. Although many hearing individuals can sign ASL fluently, there are still significant, everyday communication struggles for the hearing impaired. A new high-tech glove that can translate ASL to spoken English may soon make life a lot easier for this demographic. 
 
 The ASL translating glove is the brainchild of Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, two University of Washington undergraduate students who recently received the $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize to help further develop their invention. According to a recent statement, the “SignAloud,” gloves work by recognizing hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in ASL. The gloves then send the data via Bluetooth to a computer that matches the gesture with the associated word or phrase. Finally, the computer speaks the word or phrase aloud. 
 
 The SignAloud gloves are not the first ASL-to-verbal language translating device. For example, in 2012 a group of Ukrainian students created a glove called EnableTalk that works in a similar way, using a text-to-speech engine to first translate the ASL signs into text and then convert them into spoken words. Just last year, Hadeel Ayoub from Goldsmiths, University of London, created another type of sign-to-speech glove. This glove works by attaching several sensors to the fingers to record their position and then sending data to a computer using wires sewn into the lining. However, according to the SignAloud co-creator Pryor, there are some meritable differences between SignAloud and past prototypes. 
 
 “Many of the sign language translation devices already out there are not practical for everyday use. Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user’s entire arm or body,” said Pryor in a recent statement. “Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses.” 
 
 According to the World Health Organization, around 360 million people worldwide have some form of disabling hearing loss, and many of these individuals rely on sign language to communicate. ASL is a complete and complicated visual language used primarily by the hearing impaired community in North America. Many may associate ASL as being a form of English, but in reality it is its own grammatically different language. The stages of language acquisition for babies are the same as they are for spoken languages, only difference being that deaf children “babble” with their hands as opposed to their mouths, Mental Floss reported. 
 
 While ASL is often called the fourth most spoken language in the U.S. (although the accuracy of this measurement is debatable), the hearing impaired community still faces many difficulties when interacting with the hearing world. According to co-inventor Azodi, the main purpose of the gloves are to “provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” by allowing the hearing impaired to communicate verbally. ||||| UW undergraduate team wins $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that translate sign language 
 
 Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech. 
 
 The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. This year, UW sophomores Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor — who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively — won the “Use It” undergraduate category that recognizes technology-based inventions to improve consumer devices. 
 
 Their invention, “SignAloud,” is a pair of gloves that can recognize hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in American Sign Language. Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data match a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker. 
 
 They honed their prototype in the UW CoMotion MakerSpace — a campus space that offers communal tools and equipment and opportunities for students to tinker, create and innovate. For Azodi and Pryor, that meant finding a way to translate American Sign Language into a verbal form instantaneously and in an ergonomic fashion. 
 
 “Many of the sign language translation devices already out there are not practical for everyday use. Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user’s entire arm or body,” said Pryor, an undergraduate researcher in the Composite Structures Laboratory in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics and software lead for the Husky Robotics Team. 
 
 “Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses,” said Pryor. 
 
 The duo met in the dorms during their freshman year and discovered they both had a passion for invention and problem solving. Azodi has technical experience as a systems intern at NASA, a technology lead for UW Information Technology and a campus representative for Apple. His long history of volunteer work — which includes organizing dozens of blood drives and working with Seattle Union Gospel Mission, Northwest Harvest and Ethiopia Reads — gave motivation to build a device that would have real-world impact. 
 
 “Our purpose for developing these gloves was to provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” Azodi said. “The idea initially came out of our shared interest in invention and problem solving. But coupling it with our belief that communication is a fundamental human right, we set out to make it more accessible to a larger audience.” 
 
 The team received support and mentoring from Mike Clarke, who manages the CoMotion MakerSpace and met the students after one asked for help with some soldering equipment that turned out to be broken. 
 
 “We disassembled it and fixed it together while talking about their sign language translation project. I recognized from working and talking with Thomas and Navid that they were standouts and that the invention they made was really impressive,” Clarke said. 
 
 Pryor and Azodi’s first target audience is the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and those interested in learning and working with American Sign Language. But the gloves could also be commercialized for use in other fields, including medical technology to monitor stroke patients during rehabilitation, gesture control and enhanced dexterity in virtual reality. 
 
 Their “Use It” Student Prize is one of seven awarded by the Lemelson-MIT Program this year. Each winning team of undergraduates will receive $10,000, and each graduate student winner will receive $15,000. The winners of this year’s competition were selected from a diverse and highly competitive applicant pool of students from 77 colleges and universities across the country. 
 
 “This year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners have outstanding portfolios of inventive work,” said Lemelson-MIT Program faculty director Michael Cima. “Their passion for solving problems through invention is matched by their commitment to mentoring the next generation of inventors.” Students interested in applying for the 2017 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize can complete this interest form. ||||| SignAloud gloves interpret the hand gestures of American Sign Language users and convert them into speech that hearing, English speakers can understand. 
 
 A pair of sophomores at the University of Washington in Seattle have invented high-tech gloves that can interpret the hand gestures of American Sign Language (ASL) users and convert them into speech that hearing people who don’t know ASL can understand. 
 
 Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor – business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering majors, respectively – created gloves, called SignAloud, that are equipped with sensors that track hand gestures. The gloves send them wirelessly to a computer that matches the ASL movements with words from a database and then speaks them out loud or writes them. 
 
 ASL is the primary language used by many North Americans who are deaf, and is one of several communication methods used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. About half a million people are thought to use the language to communicate. 
 
 “Our purpose for developing these gloves was to provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world,” Mr. Azodi, who with his teammate Mr. Pryor recently won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for their invention, said in a statement. The idea for the gloves, according to the prize website, came from Azodi's personal experience, which required him to used non-verbal communication until he was 7 years old. 
 
 Their invention is not the first to translate ASL into English. Researchers at Texas A&M University developed a wearable device that also translates sign language into English by sensing the user’s movements, as Smithsonian magazine reported in October. 
 
 The magazine described several others that have been created in recent years: 
 
 An app called Transcense, released last year, translates speech from multiple people into written words, and presents them on the screen in color-coded bubbles. It’s meant to help deaf people at meetings or in social situations, where multiple speakers can be a challenge for even the most proficient lip-readers. Another company, MotionSavvy, has been working on a tablet that interprets ASL motions and reads the words out loud in English. In China, researchers have used Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing equipment to translate Chinese Sign Language into spoken and written words. 
 
 SignAloud, say its young creators, is well suited for day-to-day use. 
 
 “Our gloves are lightweight, compact and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses,” said Pryor. 
 
 The partners are first targeting their new technology for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and people interested in learning sign language. But, say the two in a statement, the gloves could also be used in other fields one day, including to monitor patients during rehabilitation, and for enhanced dexterity in virtual reality.
– Some half a million people use American Sign Language to communicate. Now, communicating with others who don't know ASL could be as easy as donning a pair of gloves. Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor, undergraduates at the University of Washington, were recently awarded a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a pair of gloves, called SignAloud, that convert ASL to speech. The goal is to "provide an easy-to-use bridge between native speakers of American Sign Language and the rest of the world," says Azodi, who used non-verbal communication until age 7, per the Christian Science Monitor. Sensors inside the gloves read hand position and movement, the data is sent to a computer via Bluetooth, and the computer speaks the ASL word or phrase in English. These aren't the first such gloves. "Some use video input, while others have sensors that cover the user’s entire arm or body," Pryor tells Medical Daily. However, "our gloves are lightweight, compact, and worn on the hands, but ergonomic enough to use as an everyday accessory, similar to hearing aids or contact lenses." Whether the deaf community is interested is another story: Azodi tells NPR the pair have been criticized for "not understanding the [ASL] culture." For example, a negative of a word in ASL is often conveyed with a shaking of the head or a frown, which isn't possible with SignAloud. Azodi and Pryor say they're working with ASL users to upgrade the gloves, which may also help monitor stroke patients and enhance dexterity and gesture control in virtual reality, per the University of Washington. (A whole class learned sign language for a deaf boy.)