This document describes a device that helps people with disabilities communicate. It includes gloves with flex sensors that allow people with paralysis to convey words by finger movements. It also has speech-to-text and text-to-speech functions to help deaf and blind users. The device translates sign language, finger movements, or whispered speech into audible words using sensors, microcontrollers, and Bluetooth. This allows people with disabilities to express their basic needs and thoughts without needing a human interpreter.

1. By,
Xavier Prathap W, III BSc
St. Claret College.

2. • Now-a-days to lead our life we had to run with our fast materialistic
world.
• To express our thoughts, we communicate with different people in
different languages and in different ways.
• But, it is extremely difficult for the dumb, blind and people who are
affected by paralysis to express their ideas in speech or text.
• Hence, there is a need to develop a platform for those people who
are physically challenged.
• Hence, Vibration Sensors and Silent Speech Interfaces are developed
that can be either fixed on the hands or face.

3. Such an Electronic device shall help,
• paralysis affected people to communicate by wearing a glove made up
of flex sensors that can convey their ideas.
• dumb people by pressing the keypad in the device to express their
basic needs with the text-to-speech IC.
• When the blind people speak, speech-to-text module converts it and
viewed in a display.
• No need for “Human Interpreter” for blind people, to write.

4. • A team of Ukrainian researchers called QuadSquad is trying to
bring down the barrier. They’ve designed a system called
EnableTalk.
• It includes a glove that can sense the movements of the wearer’s
hands and fingers and translate the signs into spoken word

5. • Each glove is lined with more than a dozen flex .
• Built-in accelerometers can tell when the hand gestures, and in
which direction.
• On the back of the hand lies a controller, the heart of the system
that analyzes all these incoming signals and transmits them via
Bluetooth to a mobile device.
• A lithium-ion battery charged via USB powers the device.
• Finally a software translates the signals into an audio signal, and
spoken words emerge.

6. Flex sensors
 The people who are affected by the
Paralysis wear gloves which are designed
with flex sensors.
 Each flex sensor denotes a word.
 When a finger is moved, it produces the
voice of that word.
 This takes place by placing a Bluetooth
transmitter and receiver.

7. Flex sensors
 The flex sensors are based on resistive carbon element technology.
 They are an analog resistor which works as variable voltage drivers.
 The carbon resistive element is placed inside the flex sensors as a thin
 flexible substrate. Depending upon the amount of bend in the sensors, it can
change its electrical resistance value.
 The flex sensors are in the form of a thin strip from 1-5 inches long. It can
be uni-directed or bi-directed. They vary in their values as 1-20 kΩ; 50-200
kΩ,

8. Images of flex sensors

9. 1. Inner speech: mental simulation of speech.
2. Subvocal invisible speech : when a person silently reads or recites
to him/herself, ensors under a person’s chin.
3. Subvocal visible speech : one wanted to be seen but not
heard, ultrasound motion of the tongue Movement captured.
4. Non-audible murmur (NAM): softly whispered, subvocal
invisible speech with air emission.
5. Whispered speech: similar to NAM but heard more clearly.

10. Silent speech interfaces (SSI)
 The speech production process can be regarded as
producing a set of coherent multimodal signals, such as
the electrical cerebral signals, the myoelectrical signals
observable from the muscles, the movements of the
orofacial articulators that are visible or not, or acoustic
signals
Multimodal signals during the speech production process

11. Electro-encephalographic (EEG) sensors
 Brain areas are activated in the production of speech.
 To exploit the electromagnetic waves created by these
cerebral activities, noninvasive electroencephalography or
EEG devices are frequently used as a brain-to computer
interface (BCI)

12. Surface Electromyography (sEMG)
 The surface Electromyography (sEMG) method
measures muscular electric potential with a set of
electrodes attached to the skin where the articulatory
muscles underlie.

13. Tongue displays
 Apart from very sophisticated medical imaging techniques such as
cineradiography or real-time MRI that provide complete tongue
displays, several other techniques such as ElectroMagnetic Articulography
(EMA) or ultrasound (US) imaging provide partial information of the inner
organs in motion.

14.  This device is a boon for the dumb
people, physically handicapped people
and for the blind people.
 This single device resolves the
maximum problems faced by those
people. Any one of those people can
use this device and they can reveal
their basic thoughts with other people.
 By using this device, the people with
disabilities can lead their life in an
enjoyable way as all other people in the

15.  PHd Thesis , By Viet Anh Tran.
 http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/rethinking-
healthcare/gloves-turn-sign-language-into-speech/9489
 http://scialert.net/abstract/index.php?doi=jai.2013.75.81
 Poster presented in Fifth Science
Conclave, IIIT, Allahabad.

16. By,
Xavier Prathap W, III BSc
St. Claret College.