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Microsoft trailers Kinect's sign-language capability

Microsoft has released a new video that showcases current-gen Kinect's ability to understand sign-language and transcribe it into text. The tech is currently proficient in American and Chinese, but has the potential to extend to other languages.

Cover image for YouTube video

Gaming Target reports that Microsoft Research has tested the tech at its lab in Beijing and had this to say about the breakthrough:

"Kinect, with its ability to provide depth information and color data simultaneously, makes it easier to track hand and body actions more accurately—and quickly.

In this project—which is being shown during the demofest portion of faculty summit 2013, which brings more than 400 academic researchers to Microsoft headquarters to share insight into impactful research—the hand tracking leads to a process of 3-D motion-trajectory alignment and matching for individual words in sign language.

"The words are generated via hand tracking by the Konect for Windows software and then normalized, and matching scores are computed to identify the most relevant candidates when a signed word is analyzed."

It's a big step for those with impaired hearing, and it could be a useful tool for opening up Xbox and Windows to all users, regardless of impairments. What do you think?

Thanks OXM.

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Dave Cook avatar

Dave Cook

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Dave worked on VG247 for an extended period manging much of the site's news output. As well as his experience in games media, he writes for comics, and now specializes in books about gaming history.

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