Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence in Sign Language Expression

Sign language, the vibrant tapestry of hand gestures and facial expressions, is the lifeblood of Deaf and hardof-hearing communities. For millions of signers, American Sign Language (ASL) runs deeper than communication, fundamental to identity, expression, and belonging. And yet an unshakeable communication gap leaves users of ASL frequently marooned away from the hearing world, kept from education, healthcare, or employment, or from basic, everyday transactions. By posing this new unsolved challenge to the power and promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), this work leads the way towards closing that chasm by real-time recognition and translation of full ASL. Our approach employs a novel variant of Random Forest and utilizes cutting-edge video processing techniques to identify and understand the nuanced, often exquisitely delicate detail of ASL signing, at unprecedented levels of accuracy, and at speed. Another layer of innovation that characterizes our work is our integration of augmented reality (AR). By embedding AR along with our translator of artificial intelligence tech, we intend to completely change the way American Sign Language (ASL) is conveyed by directly engraining our already robust Random Forest model and advanced video processing techniques to project the ASL translation directly into your visual field in real time. The goal to demystify this complex and vivid language and, in doing so, to remove the communication barriers that persist between the Deaf community and the rest of the world, thus, fostering inclusion.