Project Slogans: 3D avatar to interpret sign language in tourism and transportation

Indra's Consignos R&D&i project has developed a 3D animated voice avatar and translator into Spanish sign language to facilitate access for deaf and hearing-impaired people to tourist and transportation services..

The Spanish multinational Indra has developed the R&D&I project Slogans, with the creation and implementation of a 3D animated avatar that recognizes voice and translates into Spanish sign language to facilitate the access of deaf and hearing-impaired people to tourist and transportation services.

The Consignos project, developed at 50% between the Higher School of Informatics (creation of the 3D Avatar) and the UPM (translation and voice recognition) has allowed Indra to win the Spanish edition of the European CSR Awards as “Best large company”, in which the Municipal Transport Company also participates (EMT) from Madrid.

The development of Consignos aims to facilitate communication for the deaf community through an animated agent that facilitates access to the content and services offered through new technologies., as well as the interaction with them through sign language.

After two years of development, coordinated by Indra through its network of Software Labs, Consignos is the first prototype for voice recognition, translation and generation of signs using an animated agent in Spanish sign language in the aforementioned environments, although similar systems already exist in other languages (English).

To ensure its usefulness and future application, The system has been tested by people with hearing disabilities, who have participated in all phases of the project and evaluated its functionalities in two pilots.

The first pilot took place in a public transport service, specifically the EMT of Madrid, at the information booths of this organization at the Plaza de Castilla interchange.

A hotel environment, in collaboration with the Institute for Tourism Quality (ICTE), he was the second pilot, focused on computerized check-in and check-out services at the Intur Palacio San Martín hotel in Madrid, who also collaborated in data collection and analysis of the starting situation of the project.

All the knowledge acquired will be very useful to achieve the objectives set by Consignos, which also foresees the development of new translation techniques and a new virtual agent that will represent an important advance in the realistic description of movement and its reusable management..

Although the technology developed in the project will be used for the design and development of accessible information systems for people with hearing disabilities, this technology will be used for games, e-learning and educational offer for deaf people, video systems interpretation or signing of multimedia content.