• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.14B no.2
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• pp.107-118
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• 2007

This paper proposes a 3D avatar which expresses sign language in a very using lips, facial expression, complexion, pupil motion and body motion as well as hand shape, Hand posture and hand motion to overcome the limitation of conventional sign language avatars from a deaf's viewpoint. To describe motion data of hand and other body components structurally and enhance the performance of databases, we introduce the concept of a hyper sign sentence. We show the superiority of the developed system by a usability test through a questionnaire survey.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.265-270
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• 2014

Hearing-impaired people have difficulty in hearing, so it is also hard for them to learn letters that represent sound and text that conveys complex and abstract concepts. Therefore it has been natural choice for the hearing-impaired people to use sign language for communication, which employes facial expression, and hands and body motion. However, the major communication methods in daily life are text and speech, which are big obstacles for the hearing-impaired people to access information, to learn and make intellectual activities, and to get jobs. As delivering information via internet become common the hearing-impaired people are experiencing more difficulty in accessing information since internet represents information mostly in text forms. This intensifies unbalance of information accessibility. This paper reports web-based text-to-sign language translating system that helps web designer to use sign language in web page design. Since the system is web-based, if web designers are equipped with common computing environment for internet browsing, they can use the system. The web-based text-to-sign language system takes the format of bulletin board as user interface. When web designers write paragraphs and post them through the bulletin board to the translating server, the server translates the incoming text to sign language, animates with 3D avatar and records the animation in a MP4 file. The file addresses are fetched by the bulletin board and it enables web designers embed the translated sign language file into their web pages by using HTML5 or Javascript. Also we analyzed text used by web pages of public services, then figured out new words to the translating system, and added to improve translation. This addition is expected to encourage wide and easy acceptance of web pages for hearing-impaired people to public services.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.59-73
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• 2003

As a means of overcoming the linguistic barrier between different languages in the Internet, a new sign-language communication system with CG animation techniques has been developed and proposed. In the system, the joint angles of the arms and the hands corresponding to the gesture as a non-verbal communication tool have been considered. The emotional expression, however, could as play also an important role in communicating each other. Especially, a comic expression is more efficient than real facial expression, and the movements of the cheeks and the jaws are more important AU's than those of the eyebrow, eye, mouth etc. Therefore, in this paper, we designed a 3D emotion editor using 2D model, and we extract AU's (called as PAU, here) which play a principal function in expressing emotions. We also proposed a method of generating the universal emotional expression with Avatar models which have different vertex structures. Here, we employed a method of dynamically adjusting the AU movements according to emotional intensities. The proposed system is implemented with Visual C＋＋ and Open Inventor on windows platforms. Experimental results show a possibility that the system could be used as a non-verbal communication means to overcome the linguistic barrier.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.851-856
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• 2007

수화는 청각장애인이 주로 사용하는 시각적인 언어이다. OpenGL 기반의 가상현실 공간을 배경으로 하여 청각장애인들이 쉽게 이해할 수 있는 수화 아바타의 움직임을 구현하기 위해, 본 논문에서는 수화 동작 데이터베이스를 구축하는 그래픽 사용자 인터페이스를 개발한다. 개발한 시스템에서는 아바타의 사실적인 표현과 친근감을 강조하기 위해 3D MAX 기반의 인체 아바타 모델의 픽셀 값을 ASE를 사용하여 C언어 코드로 변환함으로써 인간과 거의 비슷한 모델을 생성하였다. 손 모양 편집프로그램은 슬라이드 바를 사용하여 21개의 손 관절 각도를 조정할 수 있으며, 손 모양 코드번호와 손 모양 이름을 지정하여 수화단어 편집프로그램에서 사용하는 손 모양 데이터 형식으로 저장할 수 있다. 수화단어 편집프로그램은 수화단어 데이터 형식의 값을 설정하는 기능과 함께 손 모양 대칭복사, 검색, 추가, 수정, 삭제 기능을 제공함으로써 사용자가 손 모양을 쉽게 편집할 수 있도록 하였다. 손 모양 편집프로그램과 수화단어 편집프로그램을 사용하여 구성한 데이터베이스를 기반으로 수화 아바타가 가상현실 공간에서 인간과 유사한 움직임을 표현할 수 있도록 하였다.