Development of robotic hands of signbot, advanced Malaysian sign-language performing robot

This paper presents the development of a 3D printed humanoid robotic hands of SignBot, which can perform Malaysian Sign Language (MSL). The study is considered as the first attempt to ease the means of communication between the general community and the hearing-impaired individuals in Malaysia. The signed motions performed by the developed robot in this work can be done by two hands. The designed system, unlike previously conducted work, includes a speech recognition system that can feasibly integrate with the controlling platform of the robot. Furthermore, the design of the system takes into account the grammar of the MSL which differs from that of Malay spoken language. This reduces the redundancy and makes the design more efficient and effective. The robot hands are built with detailed finger joints. Micro servo motors, controlled by Arduino Mega, are also loaded to actuate the relevant joints of selected alphabetical and numerical signs as well as phrases for emergency contexts from MSL. A database for the selected signs is developed wherein the sequential movements of the servo motor arrays are stored. The results showed that the system performed well as the selected signs can be understood by hearing-impaired individuals.