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Roy Allela, from Kenya, has developed Sign-IO (Sign-Input-Output) which is a combination of smart gloves and a mobile application to instantly translate sign language movements into speech. The sign language glove has five flex sensors mounted on each finger to quantify how much a finger is bent.
Source: royallela.com
The technology embedded in the gloves allows the reading of the user’s finger movements which are then compared to an embedded database using the American Sign Language as a reference. When there is a match, the data is then transmitted to an Android application where it is vocalized (sign-to-speech) in real time.
An innovation or an invention is almost always the result of a problem which needed a solution. Roy Allela’s niece was born deaf and could not communicate easily with her family members who did not understand sign language. With this problem in mind, Roy Allela endeavored to find a solution. He had no other choice but to learn sign language to accomplish this feat.
Roy Allela graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor's Degree in Microprocessor Technology and Instrumentation in 2016. He Founded Sign-IO in 2017 and is currently employed at Intel (Germany) as Software Technical Consulting Engineer - Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI).