A Fast Sign Word Recognition Method for Chinese Sign Language

Sign language is the language used by the deaf, which is a comparatively steadier expressive system composed of signs corresponding to postures and motions assisted by facial expression. The objective of sign language recognition research is to "see" the language of deaf. The integration of sign language recognition and sign language synthesis jointly comprise a "human-computer sign language interpreter", which facilitates the interaction between deaf and their surroundings. Considering the speed and performance of the recognition system, Cyberglove is selected as gesture input device in our sign language recognition system, Semi-Continuous Dynamic Gaussian Mixture Model (SCDGMM) is used as recognition technique, and a search scheme based on relative entropy is proposed and is applied to SCDGMM-based sign word recognition. Comparing with SCDGMM recognizer without searching scheme, the recognition time of SCDGMM recognizer with searching scheme reduces almost 15 times.