Someday, we can communicate with speech impaired people without any barrier. A group of engineering students who call themselves Team Voice is a team that seeks to offer such a solution.

Significantly, the team hopes to help people who have been robbed of their ability to speak by conditions such as traumatic brain injuries. “We want people who were born with speech impairment and those who have lost their ability to speak to get their voices back," says team leader, Shahidan.

According to Shahidan, this is the broad and proper way to frame the challenge. “It's a very, very elegant approach. Wearables are gaining widespread use and technologies are making it possible to translate sign language as part of connected infrastructures," he adds.

Since, the group has woven multiple voltage sensors into a glove to make it into an assistive device for people with speech impairments. From a functional standpoint, each finger sports a flex sensor to translate speech signs.

The project started life as an integrated engineering project where every engineering student at UTP is required to cooperate with students from other engineering disciplines to solve real community problems.

Providing context on project's background, Shahidan says, “The project has to be based on UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). So we decided to focus on infrastructure along the main theme of inclusiveness."

According to Shahidan, the team was given an initial budget of RM300 to get the project in motion.

Shahidan says, “We intended this as an educational tool, but in the future, we hope to see more iterations of the end-product. To be commercially viable, it needs to be portable and can be used in real life scenarios."

Currently, the device has been programmed to translate gestures into alphabets which are then transmitted onto a small LCD screen.

“The sensors are wired to a single Arduino microcontroller board.  Most of the technologies we are using are readily accessible. At the moment, we program the ideal voltage generated from each gesture and match it to the voltage from the user-given gesture in order to translate the alphabets," explains Shahidan.

Next, Shahidan says, the team will be on the lookout for funding to pursue further research to program sign language into synthesized speech outputs.

According to Shahidan, in the near future, the goal is to pack more sophistication into the wearable system. Ultimately, by stitching together electronic components such as gyroscopes and accelerometers, the team aspires to create a fully functional wearable system that can be used as a communication tool for people with speech impairments.

While the project's results are encouraging, it will take years of further work before the technology can be made available. “The project holds great promise. We can tap into the power of IoT to make it more accessible to a serve a wider group of demographics," concludes Shahidan.

This is another prime example of UTP's profound career connected learning and industry collaboration. From the work we do, we foster long-term relationships with our global social-impact partners to prepare our students, people and researchers as global citizens.

As a leading university in engineering, science and technology, our graduates are driven to exceed their professional objectives and contribute towards overcoming capability deficit across all sectors and industries.​