Download Technology and Communication: Designing a Gadget

Technology and Communication:
Designing a Gadget
Adil Ali
X-C
Delhi Public School, Nacharam
Introduction
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Communication among humans has a long way since
humans first walked on this planet.
Humans first signaled to each other using hand signals,
and later clicking their tongue. These ‘clicks’ slowly
evolved into language around 50,000 BC.
Then came writing. Writing was invented around 5000
BC and since then has remained the most used means
of communication.
Technological improvements in the 19th Century led to
the inventions of the telegraph and telephone
respectively.
The 20th Century saw the inventions of television,
computers, mobile phones and the internet,
transforming the way humans communicated.
Designing a gadget to aid in
communication
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The most common means of communication among
humans is speech. It is also the most effective way of
communication as it is faster the writing or typing.
However, some are, unfortunately, born incapable of
speech. Thus they have to resort to communicating via
hand signals.
However, this is extremely inefficient, as the non-mute
person does not understand the Sign Language. So, it is
not easy for a mute and a normal person to
communicate.
Thus, our objective is to help bridge this communication
gap for ease of the vocally-handicapped.
The ‘Speechinator’
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The ‘Speechinator’, as we call it, is our
prototype gadget to accomplish our objective as
stated before.
It would consist of a glove, with sensors
embedded in it, and a mouthpiece which would
convert their sign language to speech.
All the mute person would need to do is wear
the glove on his hand, signal in the Sign
language, and the mouthpiece will speak out
what the person wish to convey.
Working
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The glove, would be embedded with sensors,
which would detect the motion of the wearer’s
hand.
The glove would be programmed to recognize
certain positions of the fingers, i.e. meaningful
symbols of the Sign Language.
On recognising the symbols, the glove would
convert it to text. The text will be sent to a Textto-Speech synthesizer to convert the text to
speech.
This speech would be output via the
mouthpiece.
“Text”
Estimations
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Practicality
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Several versions of the ‘glove’ mentioned exist, though none
are used for this purpose. One such example are the gloves
used in virtual reality games. Therefore, constructing such a
glove is easily possible.
Text-To-Speech has gained leverage with Voice assistants like
SIRI and Cortana. Therefore, speech synthesis would not be a
problem.
Cost
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The sensors glove would cost approximately Rs.500 ($9) , and
the other components around Rs.3000($50).
The mouthpiece would cost around Rs 100, bringing the total
cost to around Rs.3500 (~ $60)
This would be a one-time investment, therefore it is not too
costly.