A Kenyan invents Smart Goves that Convert Sign Language into Audio

A young Kenyan innovator has invented smart gloves which are able to convert sign language movements into audio speeches. 

Roy Allela was inspired to come up with this innovation after one of his niece’s was born deaf and found it extremely difficult to communicate with other members of the family.

 The smart gloves convert sign language into audio speech and allow for easy communication with speech impaired people. 

Sign-io’s sign language to speech translation glove recognizes various letters signed by sign language users. It then transmits this data to an Android application where it is vocalized. 

Roy’s amazing invention earned him recognition by the prestigious American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). During the prestigious 2017 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) competition, the 25-year-old was one of three persons from Africa who won the Grand Prize.

 He was joined by Brian Gitta from Uganda who developed Matibabu, a noninvasive device used to test for Malaria, and Charles Antipem from Ghana who created Science Set, an affordable, portable, practical and highly scalable science lab that can fit in the bag and on the desk of students. 

The winners were among ten socially-minded hardware entrepreneurs who were selected among 150 applicants as finalist of the event, held at the Golden Tulip Westlands Nairobi Hotel. 

All the winners shared $500,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. Currently, more than 30 million people around the globe have speech impairments and must rely on sign language.

Source:yen.com