NEWS / 2 Texas teens develop AI tool to translate sign language

A couple of high school seniors from northern Texas developed a groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Hand Wave, which translates American Sign Language (ASL) in real time.

“This was completely unrelated from school,” One of the teenagers, Shiven Velagapudi, was quoted by NBCDFW as stating. “We kinda just picked this up for fun and mainly because we noticed that this was a problem that we wanted to solve in the real world.”

Velagapudi and his friend Aadi Sanghvi are combining motion detection with machine language learning to teach the AI tool how to interpret and translation ASL phrases in real time. They do this by linking signs to a hand skeleton translated through smart glasses with an integrated camera.

"I can look at you and behind the camera you can be signing and I can be hearing the translations live in my ear,” Sanghvi stated.

Both teenagers have relatives who struggle with hearing loss. Sanghvi’s uncle speaks ASL, while Velagapudi’s father lost hearing in one ear. Velagapudi noted that their tool aimed at helping more people understand the ASL community.

Sanghvi also underscored the project’s ability to bring people together.

“I think it fosters unity. I think there are a lot of things happening in our world that makes it easy to feel divided, I guess, so I think it reminds us that we are more similar than we might expect,” the teenager noted. “Being able to communicate or share conversations about our fears, our strengths, our weaknesses, our dreams, just on a human level, I think that's something we have to be doing.”

With sufficient time and funding, the pair of teenagers hope to be able to present a prototype ready for use outside their home office.

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