What's all this about?

The SignMaster 9000 is an American Sign Language alphabet decoder. This device will be embedded in a glove that can be easily worn on the signing hand. The glove will use flex sensors to analyze the unique finger configurations during the signing of a letter and display the corresponding letter on an LCD screen.

ASL is a method of communication primarily used by the deaf, with an ASL alphabet mapping each English letter to a sign language letter. The language itself is not like written English in that a word is not made by signing each individual letter that makes up the word. Instead, there is a dictionary of words that can be signed with their own unique gestures unrelated to the alphabet. Here is an image of the ASL alphabet:

For our ESE350 final project, we would like to implement a stepping stone to a complete sign language decoder. Finger spelling -- that is, signing words by spelling out the letters in the word -- is an elementary version of sign language that is primarily used in deaf education. We wish to design and build an ASL letter decoder for the use of finger spelling. Stay tuned for our technological adventures!