Automated Bangla sign language translation system for alphabets by means of MobileNet

Individuals with hearing and speaking impairment communicate using sign language. The movement of hand, body and expressions of face are the means by which the people, who are unable to hear and speak, can communicate. Bangla sign alphabets are formed with one or two hand movements. There are some features which differentiates the signs. To detect and recognize the signs, analyzing its shape and comparing its features is necessary. This paper aims to propose a model and build a computer systemthat can recognize Bangla Sign Lanugage alphabets and translate them to corresponding Bangla letters by means of deep convolutional neural network (CNN). CNN has been introduced in this model in form of a pre-trained model called “MobileNet” which produced an average accuracy of 95.71% in recognizing 36 Bangla Sign Language alphabets

BdSpell: A YOLO-based Real-time Finger Spelling System for Bangla Sign Language

In the domain of Bangla Sign Language (BdSL) interpretation, prior approaches often imposed a burden on users, requiring them to spell words without hidden characters, which were subsequently corrected using Bangla grammar rules due to the missing classes in BdSL36 dataset. However, this method posed a challenge in accurately guessing the incorrect spelling of words. To address this limitation, we propose a novel real-time finger spelling system based on the YOLOv5 architecture. Our system employs specified rules and numerical classes as triggers to efficiently generate hidden and compound characters, eliminating the necessity for additional classes and significantly enhancing user convenience. Notably, our approach achieves character spelling in an impressive 1.32 seconds with a remarkable accuracy rate of 98\%. Furthermore, our YOLOv5 model, trained on 9147 images, demonstrates an exceptional mean Average Precision (mAP) of 96.4\%. These advancements represent a substantial progression in augmenting BdSL interpretation, promising increased inclusivity and accessibility for the linguistic minority. This innovative framework, characterized by compatibility with existing YOLO versions, stands as a transformative milestone in enhancing communication modalities and linguistic equity within the Bangla Sign Language community

Machine learning methods for sign language recognition: a critical review and analysis.

Sign language is an essential tool to bridge the communication gap between normal and hearing-impaired people. However, the diversity of over 7000 present-day sign languages with variability in motion position, hand shape, and position of body parts making automatic sign language recognition (ASLR) a complex system. In order to overcome such complexity, researchers are investigating better ways of developing ASLR systems to seek intelligent solutions and have demonstrated remarkable success. This paper aims to analyse the research published on intelligent systems in sign language recognition over the past two decades. A total of 649 publications related to decision support and intelligent systems on sign language recognition (SLR) are extracted from the Scopus database and analysed. The extracted publications are analysed using bibliometric VOSViewer software to (1) obtain the publications temporal and regional distributions, (2) create the cooperation networks between affiliations and authors and identify productive institutions in this context. Moreover, reviews of techniques for vision-based sign language recognition are presented. Various features extraction and classification techniques used in SLR to achieve good results are discussed. The literature review presented in this paper shows the importance of incorporating intelligent solutions into the sign language recognition systems and reveals that perfect intelligent systems for sign language recognition are still an open problem. Overall, it is expected that this study will facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation of intelligent-based SLR and provide readers, researchers, and practitioners a roadmap to guide future direction

Modern automatic recognition technologies for visual communication tools

Общение представляет собой широкий спектр различных действий, связанных с приёмом и передачей информации. Процесс общения складывается из вербальных, паравербальных и невербальных компонентов, содержащих информационную часть передаваемого сообщения и его эмоциональную окраску соответственно. Комплексный анализ всех компонентов общения позволяет оценить не только содержательную составляющую, но и ситуативный контекст сказанного, а также выявлять дополнительные факторы, относящиеся к психическому и соматическому состоянию говорящего. Существует несколько методов передачи вербального сообщения, среди которых устная и жестовая речь. Речевые и околоречевые компоненты общения могут содержаться в различных каналах данных, таких как аудио- или видеоканалы. В данном обзоре рассматриваются системы анализа видеоданных ввиду того, что аудиоканал не способен передать ряд околоречевых компонентов общения, вносящих в передаваемое сообщение дополнительную информацию. Проводится анализ существующих баз данных статических и динамических образов и систем, разрабатываемых для распознавания вербальной составляющей в устной и жестовой речи, а также систем, оценивающих паравербальные и невербальные компоненты общения. Обозначены сложности, с которыми сталкиваются разработчики подобных баз данных и систем. Также сформулированы перспективные направления разработок, связанные в том числе с комплексным анализом всех компонентов общения с целью наиболее полной оценки передаваемого сообщения.Работа выполнена при поддержке Госпрограммы 47 ГП «Научно-технологическое развитие Российской Федерации» (2019-2030), тема 0134-2019-0006

StepNet: Spatial-temporal Part-aware Network for Sign Language Recognition

Sign language recognition (SLR) aims to overcome the communication barrier for the people with deafness or the people with hard hearing. Most existing approaches can be typically divided into two lines, i.e., Skeleton-based and RGB-based methods, but both the two lines of methods have their limitations. RGB-based approaches usually overlook the fine-grained hand structure, while Skeleton-based methods do not take the facial expression into account. In attempts to address both limitations, we propose a new framework named Spatial-temporal Part-aware network (StepNet), based on RGB parts. As the name implies, StepNet consists of two modules: Part-level Spatial Modeling and Part-level Temporal Modeling. Particularly, without using any keypoint-level annotations, Part-level Spatial Modeling implicitly captures the appearance-based properties, such as hands and faces, in the feature space. On the other hand, Part-level Temporal Modeling captures the pertinent properties over time by implicitly mining the long-short term context. Extensive experiments show that our StepNet, thanks to Spatial-temporal modules, achieves competitive Top-1 Per-instance accuracy on three widely-used SLR benchmarks, i.e., 56.89% on WLASL, 77.2% on NMFs-CSL, and 77.1% on BOBSL. Moreover, the proposed method is compatible with the optical flow input, and can yield higher performance if fused. We hope that this work can serve as a preliminary step for the people with deafness