April 26, 2016
Two University of Washington undergraduates have been awarded $10,000 for inventing “SignAloud,” a pair of gloves capable of translating American Sign Language into English in real time.
Sophomores Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor received the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for their submission in the undergraduate “Use It” catergory, which recognizes tech-based inventions that improve consumer devices. The “SignAloud” gloves have built-in sensors which read the wearer’s hand positions and movements, then wirelessly transmit them to a computer. The computer then runs the information through a gesture database, using an algorithm to determine the best translation, which is then spoken.