Wang Nana and Huang Shuang (Photo/ China.org)

After National Disabled Person’s Day on May 21, a video released by CCTV featuring two graduate students from Beihang University and Tsinghua University has gone viral online. Wang Nana and Huang Shuang, intent on helping their hearing-impaired friends, invented a wearable sign-language interpreter by transforming sign language into audible information. The pair won first prize last month in an open design challenge organized by the UN Development Program and tech giant Baidu.

Wang Nana started her research with a goal of helping the disabled rather than making a fortune. Her friend, Zhang Quan, could only use WeChat to communicate with her even when they were sitting face to face, as Wang did not know sign language. She felt sorry for Zhang when, surrounded by a chatting group, he could only remain silent.

At the time, Wang was a computer science student studying image-based sign language recognition technology. However, she was too focused on technical details to consider the portability of an interpretation device. It was her close friend Huang Shuang who contributed the idea of creating something wearable.

The idea for a sign language armband was inspired by a device used by student musicians studying piano. Teachers can tell whether the muscles in a student’s arm are properly aligned through the use of special armbands. Wang and Huang decided to apply this technology to their device. They put each neuromuscular signal of sign language into a system, and then employed artificial intelligence to help the system recognize and "translate" the signs into audible information. In this way, people dependent on sign language to communicate can "speak" fluently with ordinary people. 

Wang Nana and Huang Shuang