Pune student builds gloves that speak and show to help those with impairment

The expenditure on the digital glove incurred was Rs 5,500 and the raw material is readily available.

The expenditure on the digital glove incurred was Rs 5,500 and the raw material is readily available. (Source: Express Photo)

In an attempt to bridge the communication gap between a mute and a deaf and a mute and blind person, a Pune Student has built a device that allows those with hearing and speech impairment to communicate with simple hand gestures.

When engineer Abhijit Kathwate visited a school for the hearing and speech impaired in Sadashiv Peth last November, he pondered over the situation for a long time. The CoEP student, who is pursuing his M.Tech and preparing for civil services examination, sensed that he could employ his technical skills to find a solution to the problem. In a few months, Kathwate created a digital glove that could say and show 31 commands when synchronised with various finger movements.

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“The digital glove uses some flex censors which change in resistance depending on the amount of bend on the sensor and corresponding output is generated in the form of text displayed on the LCD screen and in form of audio played through a speaker,” said Kathwate, who has used binary numbers (0 and 1) to create simple commands like ‘hello’, ‘up’ and so on.

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Using the basic principles of probability, he made 31 sets of binary numbers for five fingers. The 32nd command was reserved for zero output, which became the static position of the glove. A small palm-sized controller, Arduino Uno, was used by Kathwate to make the glove.

Talking about the initial troubles, Kathwate said, “While creating a solo project, students are always looking to present software models as they are rigid and give similar result every time. But with a hardware model like the digital glove, there is always a risk of the end result being different from the last trial. As I am preparing for the civil services, I didn’t have enough time to submit my project papers earlier. When I finally went to our project head with an idea, he insisted that my project should be hardware based, as many had already opted for software models. That is when I decided to choose a topic that would benefit my preparation for civils too.”

Kathwate’s expenditure on the digital glove is of merely Rs 5,500 and the raw material he has used for it is easily available too. “Glove consists of five flex censors, which came for Rs 750 each. For the controller, LCD and wires, another Rs 2,000 were needed. The college bore the expenses,” he said.

Citing a future possibility of the implementation of a digital glove for both hands, Kathwate said, “With two hands, one can make as many as 1,024 commands. It will expand the library of words manifolds. There will be nothing impossible for the deaf and mute. Addition of a camera in the system can utilise the facial expression in an appropriate way to convert it into words. In our daily lives too, we can interact with people, who speak different languages, using this glove.”

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His project was guided by Dr C Y Patil, Assistant Professor, Instrumentation Department, CoEP. On April 26, Kathwate will present his paper at the International Conference for Electronics, Computer Science and Information Technology, which is taking place at Hyatt, Pune.

“I wish to enhance the quality of these gloves and introduce it in maximum schools in the coming year,” says Kathwate.