Indian Army develops ‘talking hands’ for communication

Hyderabad: Realising the communication problem between speakers and non-speakers of American Sign Language (ASL), a team of four Indian army officers developed ‘talking hands’, a ‘gesture to speech translating glove’.

This project was displayed during the 95th convocation ceremony of the Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (MCEME) here on Thursday.

The team led by Lt Vikas Thakur said the project bridges the communication gap by designing a portable glove that captures the user’s ASL gestures and outputs the translated text on a smartphone and then to speech mode.

The glove is equipped with flex sensors, reset switches and a gyroscope to measures flexion of the fingers along with the contact between fingers and the rotation of the hand.

The gloves’ Arduino mega microcontrollers analyse sensor readings to identify the gesture from a library of learned gestures. The Bluetooth module transmits the gesture to a smartphone.

Using the device, ASL speakers may be able to communicate with others in an affordable and convenient way.

Lt Thakur said the project was portable and user calibrated, and the smartphone app makes it user friendly. The flexible codes and hardware would enable the glove for further development. He added that it took two months to develop the project. Apart from talking hands, other projects such as fabrication of Go-Kart using electric drive, a hybrid bike, and internet of things (IoT) colour based product sorting machine drew the appreciation of senior officials at the ceremony.

18 Army officers conferred degree
Hyderabad: Eighteen officers of the Technical Entry Scheme Course (TES-31) graduated from the Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering (MCEME), Secunderabad.

Lieutenant General Paramjit Singh, Commandant MCEME and Colonel Commandant, conferred engineering degrees in a convocation ceremony held on Thursday.

Lt Vikas Thakur (Electronics) won the DGEME Gold Medal, GOC-in-C ARTRAC Trophy, Best Student Book Prize & Certificate and Commandant Silver Medal. Lt Vishabh Singh (Mechanical) won the Commandant Silver Medal. The Best Project award was given to the team of officers comprising Lt Vikas Thakur, Lt Varun Singh Jamwal, Lt Satyam Dhawan and Lt Joe Sibi Mattathil.

Lt Gen Singh congratulated the graduating officers on their B Tech degree. “Technical graduates will be responsible for the technical equipment and will have to associate themselves with the latest weapon systems. Actions taken by graduates will be closely monitored in the field environment and they (officers) will need to perform at very high pedestals,” said the presiding officer.

The affiliation of MCEME with JNU for conferring the B Tech degree empowers the officers to undertake confidently the challenging tasks of providing effective combat engineering support to the Indian Army during both peace and war. The MCEME College has recently been linked to the National Knowledge Network and is in the process of setting up procedures to harness the large knowledge pool existing in premier education institutions like IIsT, IIsM, ISB, JNU and JNTU Hyderabad.

Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, Secunderabad, was established in 1953. Over the years the college has developed into a premier training institution of the Indian Army.