Consignos Project: 3D avatar to interpret sign language in tourism and transport

Indra's R+D+i Consignos project has developed an animated 3D voice avatar and translator into Spanish sign language to facilitate access by deaf and hearing-impaired people to tourism and transport services.

The Spanish multinational Indra has developed the R + D + i project Signs, with the creation and implementation of a 3D animated avatar that recognizes voice and translator into Spanish sign language to facilitate the access of deaf and hearing impaired people to tourist and transport services.

The Consignos project, developed at 50% between the Higher School of Informatics (creation of the 3D Avatar) and the UPM (Translation and speech 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) of Madrid.

With the development of Consignos it is intended to facilitate the communication of the deaf collective through an animated agent that facilitates access to the contents and services offered through new technologies, as well as interaction with them through sign language.

After two years of development, coordinated by Indra through its Software Labs network, Consignos is the first prototype for speech recognition, Translation and generation of signs using an animated agent to 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 hearing impaired people, who have participated in all phases of the project and evaluated its functionalities in two pilots.

The first pilot has had as a scenario a public transport service, specifically the EMT of Madrid, in the information booths of this organization in the interchange of the Plaza de Castilla.

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, which also collaborated in the collection of data and analysis of the initial 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 the movement and in 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 gaming, E-learning and educational offer for deaf people, Video systems interpretation or signing of multimedia content.

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