14 DAY TRIAL // We relate to and try to comprehend the world around us through our senses, but we rarely stop to think how lucky we are to be able to see, hear or smell.
But some of us do. In an attempt to give a helping hand to those who have been deprived of the hearing sense, the team at MotionSavvy has come up with a piece of technology, which they hope will help deaf people integrate themselves better in the world around us.
So MotionSavvy is currently building a tablet case that takes advantage of the Leap Motion controller to translate American Sign Language into English and vice versa.
The case embeds 3D motion recognition technology, which is able to detect when a person is using ASL, interpret it and convert it into text or voice.
The soft works vice-versa too. It embeds a voice recognition system that takes advantage of the tablet’s mic and allows the hearing person to respond using voice. In turn, the soft will convert the speech into text, so the deaf person can read the message and understand what he/she is being communicated.
The creators of the tablet case met in college while attending the Rochester Institute of Technology and they all suffer from hearing deficits.
ASL is a very complex means of communication and has various different “accents” and ways to relay information.
For the time being, 800 hearing impaired people have jumped onboard with the beta testing phase of the project and MotionSavvy hopes that they will be developing the consumer-friendly product soon enough, so the aiding device can be released on the market in September 2015.
MotionSavvy also plans to build a companion app that will work with Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
Taking into account that the average interpreter would charge around $60 - $100 / €44 - €73 per hour for their services, paying for the bundle outlined above will actually save people a lot of money.
Anyway, for those of you interested in signing up for the beta program, you should know that MotionSavvy still accepts people.