Researchers at the University of California San Diego have designed a leather glove that can translate sign language into text — albeit slowly. The glove was built for less than $100 and uses pressure sensors and an accelerometer to translate a signer's hand movement to a nine-digit binary key corresponding to a letter, according to Newsweek.
Why it matters: Sign language translation is only the beginning. One of the project's engineers, Timothy O'Connor, said in a statement that the "ultimate goal is to make this a smart glove that in the future will allow people to use their hands in virtual reality... This could be better for games and entertainment, but more importantly for virtual training procedures in medicine, for example, where it would be advantageous to actually simulate the use of one's hands."
