Smartphones will soon be able to read sign language using a new artificial intelligence (AI) based algorithm designed to track the movement of hands. The algorithm, designed by Google's AI Labs, will provide a smartphone with the ability to perceive hand movements and shapes across a variety of platforms. The company stated in its blog on the Google AI website on Monday, that its algorithm will let smartphone users read sign language using Augmented Reality. Real-time hand perception is a hard task since human actions are generally unpredictable. Hands block each other and lack patterns with high contrast.

Microsoft's Kinect has already proved its credentials in reading simple hand and body movements in the gaming world. But now a team of Chinese researchers have added sign language to its motion-sensing capabilities. Scientists at Microsoft Research Asia recently demonstrated software that allows Kinect to read sign language using hand tracking. What's impressive is that it can do this in real-time, translating sign language to spoken language and vice versa at conversational speeds. The system, dubbed the Kinect Sign Language Translator, is capable of capturing a conversation from both sides.

In an effort to keep eyes on the road and hands on the wheel, researchers at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence are working on new technology that could let drivers control their vehicles' in-cabin systems with a just a wave of a finger. Geremin is a multimodal interaction technology that enables drivers to control temperature, volume, and entertainment systems using gestures. As infotainment systems become more complex and cars pull double duty as mobile offices, dashboards and steering wheels will become overloaded with buttons. Finger gestures give drivers a new way to communicate with the vehicle without taking their eyes off the road to search for the right button. With the driver's hands positioned at the textbook 10 and 2, electromagnetic sensors embedded in the dash read finger gestures based on how they disrupt the electric field.