An Electronic Glove-A Boon to the Deaf and Dumb

Disabled people find it very difficult to communicate with normal people as these people are trained to communicate using sign language which most of the normal people can’t understand. This project will help the disabled to communicate smoothly and convey the messages regarding their basic needs in the most efficient manner. The paper proposes an electronic glove which will be worn by the disabled person and the letter made by him will be recognized by means of atmega328 microcontroller which will be having an inbuilt ADC, it will compare the digital value obtained by the gesture with the pre stored values and will display the corresponding letter onto the LCD screen thereby forming a word.


Introduction
Today we see that the dumb and deaf people find it difficult to communicate or to convey their messages about their basic needs like going to washroom, feeling hungry, want to have bath etc. The means used by them to communicate is sign language instead of sound. The paper comes up with a portable device that will ease out the communication between both the normal as well as the deaf and the dumb. The paper mainly focuses on how the signs or gestures are converted to words. The important component used is the flex sensor whose resistance changes depending on the degree of the bend. More the bend more is the resistance. The project deals with conveying messages using half sign language wherein the glove will be fitted on only one hand and not the full sign language wherein both the hands are involved for making the gesture.A sign language provides sign for the entire words or for letters which can be used to form a word not having the standard sign in that sign language.

System Design
The Flex sensors will be fitted on the glove along the length of each fingers and one sensor will be fitted across the wrist to get more variation in values such that the letters don't overlap. The voltage required by each flex sensor is +5v which will be provided from the controller itself .Output from flex sensors is analog voltage which will be given to atmega328 controller having a 6 channel 10 bit inbuilt ADC ,this voltage will be converted to digital form. The digital value obtained will be compared with the prestored range and letter corresponding to that particular range will be displayed onto the LCD screen. If the sign is not valid then nothing will be displayed on the screen or it can be programmed to display a message "invalid sign".   Figure .4Basic Flex Sensor Circuit Two sizes are available for Flex Sensors: one is 2.2" (5.588cm) long and another is 4.5" (11.43cm) 7KH VHQVRUV ORRN OLNH D Nȍ UHVLVWRU $V WKH VHQVRU EHQGV WKH UHVLVWDQFH EHWZHHQ WKH WZR WHUPLQDOV ZLOO LQFUHDVH WR DV PXFK DV Nȍ DW D DQJOH 7KH )OH[ VHQVRU FDQ EH FRPELQHG ZLWK D VWDWLF resistor to create a voltage divider so as to produce a variable voltage that can be read by a microcontroller's analog-to-digital converter.Inorder to turn the flex sensor's variable resistance into a voltage that can be read by ADC of the microcontroller it will be combined with a static resistor to create a voltage divider as shown in figure 4.

Arduino UNO
The  American Sign Language (ASL) is a languagethat is helping large number of Deaf communities in the United States as well as Canada. Now, it is one of the extensively used sign language across the world. The signs can be made using both the hands or it can be done using one hand. This project uses American Sign Language wherein the gestures will be made using only one hand.

CONTACT SENSOR
Looking closely we see that the alphabets U and V are similar in their orientation i.e. in this case the flex sensors for 2 fingers are fully unflexed and if you make the gesture for U or for V the range will be same also the flex sensor fitted at the wrist side will not be of any help in this case thereby a need arises to make use of the contact sensors In this module, the backlight can be changed by using the backlight function to allow the message to be read easily. For the command or data to enter the screen the enable pin has to go from high to low. The contact sensor acts as switches which will pull the controller input pins to ground whenever there is a contact. x Voice IC could be used so that the glove can be used by the blind people.Wherein the gesture or the sign made will get converted to speech. x Sensors with better sensitivity could be used.
x For implementating the project using full sign language more number of Flex sensors will be requied as both the hands will be used in making the gesture x Improvements in the glove can be done by assigning to the movement of a finger, phrase, a greeting or common questions and answers by means of an intelligent algorithm which is based on fuzzy logic so that the person could communicate in a way even faster and he/she would not need to write a letter at all.

Results and Discussion
The letters as well as the words where succesfully displayed onto the screen.After making a sign the user has to wait for some delay for the sign to be recognised and displayed onto the screen in text form. The signs can be recognised quicky so the delay won't be large.

Conclusion
This paper is providing the system for mute and deaf with an aid to easily convey their messages without much stress, the device is portable and compact.