Together successful in the 5G.NRW funding competition - Department of Information Systems and Computer Science Department at the University of Münster (WWU)

The public services and infrastructure should be equally available to all citizens. However, due to a shortage of interpreters assisting in communication and translation between SL and spoken language, people with impairing hearing are, unfortunately, not able to use the services or infrastructure. The latest digital technology such as real-time translation app based on artificial intelligence (AI) can address the challenges, so that hearing and hearing-impaired people can understand each other in real-time. An especially innovative characteristic of this ambitious project „GIGA Gebärdensprache“ is the realization of bidirectional translation: from SL to spoken language both in text and speech, and vice versa. An avatar on a mobile terminal will be used to realize the translation from spoken language to SL. 

Against this background, the project „GIGA Gebärdensprache“ develops the first user-friendly and efficient SL app which, despite the highly required data rate, works without high latency. The app uses machine learning methods to learn German SL independently after the learning- and training phase and automatically translates it into German (text and speech) in real-time. The 5G network serves as the central enabler for the mobile application to realize real-time data exchange and calculation-intensive processes in the cloud.

The Department of Information Systems / ERCIS and the Computer Vision & Machine Learning Systems Group at the Department of Computer Science at WWU are partners of the project. During the project, the Euregio Start-Up-Center REACH WWU is also involved in workshops and dissemination. Further project partners are Nexaion, Cynapsis interactive, the University of Cologne, and Vodafone.