Developing an Intelligent Saudi Sign Language Translator for Inclusive Communication

Why Use ROS for Robotic Development? ROS (Robot Operating System) is a widely-used framework for developing robotic systems. Despite its name, ROS is not an actual operating system - it is a middleware framework that runs on top of a real operating system. In this post, I will explain why ROS is so popular for robotics development, and why I've chosen to use it in my Saudi Sign Language (SSL) translation project. What Makes ROS Stand Out? There are several key reasons developers turn to ROS when building complex robotic systems: 1. It’s Free and Open-Source Unlike other robotics development software that requires expensive licenses, ROS is completely free. Originally designed to run in Linux environments, getting started with ROS doesn’t cost anything. This makes it a fantastic choice for both research and production without the financial burden of proprietary software. 2. ROS is Distributed One of the most powerful features of ROS is its distribute...

In this blog, I will walk you through a audio integration and final implementation on hand gesture recognition system that utilizes the Mediapipe framework along with machine learning models. Audio Integration: After spending several weeks on how to detect hand signatures, I finally have a model capable of detecting and recognizing all the hand gestures mentioned in previous posts. Now it’s time to go beyond text-to-speech. The basic idea is to move from just detecting and printing the detected sign on the screen to having the program speak the detected sign out loud. The main task now is to explore the options available to implement this feature. During my online research, I identified two main options: Using Python libraries to convert text to speech Using an online service to convert text to speech To give you an idea of the pros and cons of each option, I will describe the information I found under both topics. Built-In Option Since the main program is bu...