A university instructor and two special needs students have developed new gesture-controlled technology to aid people with special needs.<\/p>\n
The Smart Gesture Control and Recognition Technologies, or Smart G-CRT, can be used to recognise specific human gestures and process them to control various devices to help people with special needs.<\/p>\n
Led by Zulfiqar M. Aslam, senior instructor at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), and developed in collaboration with students Abdulla Hashemi and Saud Al Musslot, the technology is designed to help elderly people and people with physical disabilities to carry out routine as well as non-routine tasks smoothly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe focus of our research is to apply and encourage gesture recognition and control technologies,\u201d explains Aslam. \u201cGesture recognition is the process of understanding and interpreting meaningful movements of the hands, arms, legs, face and head, therefore Smart G-CRT can be used to recognise specific human gestures and process them to control various devices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inspired by one of his students, Aslam set about developing the technology in August 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis research idea came into my mind after observing one of my students at the UAEU,\u201d explains Aslam.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was physically disabled and did not have legs \u2014 his lower body part was supported by wooden legs and the cost of these legs was almost Dh30,000. A year later, I met him again in my class and I found out that he had robotic legs that work with the sensors connected to his nervous system. However, the cost of the legs is almost Dh500,000. This inspired me tremendously and I came up with a research idea which can help people with special needs in a better and more cost-effective way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The instructor is now urging more developers to focus on gesture-related technologies for people with disabilities rather than for luxury goods such as computer games, high-end vehicles and home interior solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresently gesture-related technologies have been widely implemented and applied for the purpose of luxury and prestige, but not much effort and emphasis has been put towards people with special needs,\u201d says Aslam.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people are mostly using mechanical or robotic legs, joints, hands and arms which can turn out to be very uncomfortable, expensive, heavy and sometimes pointless because they provide a solution to a single problem. Smart G-CRT, however, will be able to provide a complete solution to each and every need and situation. They will be far superior and better than the voice interactive controls because they are not very accurate as the control depends totally on voice dialect and pronunciation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff Reporter<\/p>\n
Picture courtesy: Alamy Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A university instructor and two special needs students have developed new gesture-controlled technology to aid people with special needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}