Researchers say that thousands of people who were born deafblind will be able to understand live conversations for the first time, thanks to the development of new smart gloves.
The AI-powered gloves have been developed by researchers at Nottingham Trent University (NTU).
The system allows for spoken conversations to be translated into a type of braille and passed through the smart textiles to the fingers of people who are unable to hear or lipread.
The conversation is analysed and interpreted by artificial intelligence algorithms and summarised in real time.
The summarised conversation is then passed on to the wearer via tiny haptic actuators in the electronic gloves.
The actuators vibrate in similar ways to the six raised dots that are configured in different ways in the braille alphabet.
They sit below the knuckle on the index and ring finger and can vibrate at different frequencies, amplitudes and periods of time.
As well as emulating braille, they can potentially communicate in a number of different ways, such as indicating a direction, marking a phone notification or sounding an alarm.
They could even provide interpretations of music and elements of visual art.
Thousands of people living with deafblindness could potentially benefit
According to the charity Sense, there are an estimated 15 million people worldwide living with severe deafblindness.
There are estimated to be up to 450,000 in the UK alone; this includes nearly 24,000 aged between 0 and 19 years, many of whom have experienced the condition since birth.
Dr Theo Hughes-Riley of NTU’s Advanced Textiles Research Group (ATRG) said: “Thousands of people who are born deafblind could, for the first time ever, be able to understand live conversations thanks to the development of this new technology.”
He emphasised that this meant everyday conversations in real-life situations, with the AI listening on the user’s behalf.
He added that it could open up types of communication that many hearing and sighted people take for granted, such as conversations, announcements at a train station or an interpretation of music.
Researcher Malindu Ehelagasthenna, whose PhD is part of the study that detailed the prototype, said that the system could also potentially support people who are partially sighted and have partial hearing, as well as people who are completely deafblind.
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