• 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 KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.291-297
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• 2009

This paper introduces an electronic travel aid, named SmartWand, which detects obstacles using a ultrasonic sensor. In addition to obstacle detection, the SmartWand senses color information of objects and the environmental brightness. It is designed to be attached to a ordinary white cane in order to detect the obstacles at head-hight which cannot be covered by the cane. We have improved the first version of the SmartWand based on a user evaluation. The second version is much lighter and smaller than the previous one. It has been enhanced by two new functions. The SmartWand eliminates impact errors due to tapping the ground using a moving average filtering algorithm and restricts the detection range to the path in the moving direction using an acceleration sensor. We have tested these functions in various environments to determine the parameters for these functions.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 2006

We propose an EMG-based input interface technology for helping the tetraplegic to utilize mouse, keyboard and power wheelchair. Among possible actions for the tetraplegic utilizing these devices, teeth-clenching is chosen as an input action. By clenching left, right or both teeth, and controlling the clenching duration, several input commands for utilizing the devices can be conducted. EMG signals generated by teeth-clenching are acquired around one's left and right temples and they are used as control sources for utilizing the devices. We develop signal acquisition devices, signal processing algorithms, and prototype systems such as power wheelchair control, mouse control, and game control. Our experimental results with the tetraplegic show that the proposed method is useful for utilizing the devices.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.187-194
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• 2016

When performing experiments in indoor and outdoor environment, we need a system that monitors a volunteer to prevent dangerous situations and efficiently manages the data in real time. We developed a guidance device for visually impaired person that guides the user to walk safely to the destination in the previous study. We set a POI (Point of Interest) of a specific location indoors and outdoors and tracks the user's position and navigate the walking path using artificial markers and ZigBee modules as landmark. In addition, we develop path finding algorithm to be used for navigation in the guidance device. In the test bed, the volunteers are exposed to dangerous situations and can be an accident due to malfunction of the device since they are visually impaired person or normal person wearing a eye patch. Therefore the device requires a system that remotely monitors the volunteer wearing guidance device and manages indoor or outdoor a lot of map data. In this paper, we introduce a managing system that monitors the volunteers remotely and handles map data efficiently. We implement a management system which can monitor the volunteer in order to prevent a hazardous situation and effectively manage large amounts of data. In addition, we verified the effectiveness of the proposed system through various experiments.