3D Avatar Approach for Continuous Sign Movement Using Speech/Text

• Main Authors: Debashis Das Chakladar, Pradeep Kumar, Shubham Mandal, Partha Pratim Roy, Masakazu Iwamura, Byung-Gyu Kim
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: Indian Sign Language (ISL); natural language processing; avatar; sign movement; context-free grammar
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/8/3439

Sign language is a visual language for communication used by hearing-impaired people with the help of hand and finger movements. Indian Sign Language (ISL) is a well-developed and standard way of communication for hearing-impaired people living in India. However, other people who use spoken language always face difficulty while communicating with a hearing-impaired person due to lack of sign language knowledge. In this study, we have developed a 3D avatar-based sign language learning system that converts the input speech/text into corresponding sign movements for ISL. The system consists of three modules. Initially, the input speech is converted into an English sentence. Then, that English sentence is converted into the corresponding ISL sentence using the Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique. Finally, the motion of the 3D avatar is defined based on the ISL sentence. The translation module achieves a 10.50 SER (Sign Error Rate) score.