A team of three engineering students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) won the championship in the 2012 Intel Cup Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest – Embedded System Design Invitational Contest held in Shanghai, defeating 159 teams from 71 universities from 11 countries/cities, including Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan and NUS with their innovative design ‘Chinese Sign Language Recognition and Translation System’ for deaf mutes. CUHK won the Intel Cup in 2006 and was the first university in Hong Kong to receive the award; it is also the first university to have won the contest twice.

Under the supervision of Prof. Xu Qiang, Chan Chun Kit, Liu Rui Feng and Shu Jianfei from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering developed the ‘Chinese Sign Language Recognition and Translation System’ with Microsoft Kinect. It records the 3D positions of hand gestures in sign language, recognizes them with learning-based techniques, and then translates them into recognized forms such as words and sound.  Over 90% of both recognized and translated words and phrases in sign language are proven accurate after many careful reviews. With the system, a barrier-free environment can be provided to people with disabilities to communicate naturally with others. The additional hand sign learning game installed in the system adds a lot of fun and ease for sign language learners and more importantly promotes the use of hand signs in the community.

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