Term of the Moment
FIDO
Definition: sign-to-speech
The translation of sign language to speech. In 2020, bioengineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) developed a pair of gloves that translate American sign language to speech. The UCLA invention is much smaller than previous sign-to-speech systems that were cumbersome to wear. See text-to-speech.
The Sign-to-Speech Glove
Stretchable sensors run along each of the fingers and pick up hand movements as well as the finger placements that represent letters of the alphabet. The signals are sent to the glove's circuit board, which transmits them to a smartphone app that converts them into spoken words at about one word per second. (Image courtesy of Jun Chen Lab, UCLA.)