Indian engineer develops AI model that instantly translates American Sign Language to Eng

Priyanjali Gupta, an engineering student from Tamil Nadu's Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), has created an AI model which can translate American sign language to English in real-time. A third-year computer science student, Priyanjali Gupta is specialising in Data Science and developed the new model using Tensorflow object detection API and it is able to translate the signs using transfer learning from a pre-trained model named ssd_mobilenet. 

Gupta has shared her creation on LinkedIn wherein she demonstrated the capabilities of her AI model in a demo video. According to her Github post, "The dataset is made manually by running the Image Collection Python file that collects images from your webcam for or all the mentioned below signs in the American Sign Language: Hello, I Love You, Thank you, Please, Yes and No", She also displayed the same in her demo clip. 

Her post has garnered almost 60,000 likes on the platform as many seem to be impressed with the innovative idea that makes communication more smooth and effective. 

Used mother's taunt as inspiration

It was in February last year when Priyanjali Gupta got the idea of developing something while pursuing her Engineering degree. In an interview with Interesting Engineering, she said, "She (mother) taunted me. But it made me contemplate what I could do with my knowledge and skillset. One fine day, amid conversations with Alexa, the idea of inclusive technology struck me. That triggered a set of plans", she told Interesting Engineering. Acknowledging that creating a deep neural network for sign detection is a complex task, she said that she is learning and further working on it. 

Talking about various other platforms using technologies for translation of sign languages, she told IE, "According to me, researchers and developers are trying their best to find a solution that can be implemented. However, I think the first step would be to normalize sign languages and other modes of communication with the specially-abled and work on bridging the communication gap". 

Image: LinkedIn/@Priyanjali Gupta