Announcement System for deaf ; system developed by Punjabi University
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in
Prof. Vishal Goyal, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Dr. Lalit Goyal, Associate Professor, DAV College Jalandhar with his team is working together since 2010 for the development of machine translation system for translation of English sentences to Indian Sign Language (ISL) animated videos.
First version of this system has already been released. This is an ongoing project which requires regular updating and additions. Recently, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Government of India has sanctioned them a project for Rs. 24.15 lakhs of two years duration titled Development of announcement system at railway stations for deaf using ISL Synthetic animations. Prof. Vishal Goyal who is coordinator of Research Centre for Technology Development of Differently Abled Persons informed that in this project, they have recruited Jitesh Pubreja as Computer Programmer and Saurabh Singh as ISL Interpreter cum Signer.
With this team, they will record all the videos related to railway announcements and then these videos will be converted into ISL animations. Dr. Lalit Goyal told that there will be two types of announcements – Static and dynamic. Static announcements will be those which are never changed and are announced continuously on the railway stations for warnings, guiding and advicing. Dynamic announcements are those which are announcements in relations to arrival, departure, change of platform, calling some person, instant warnings etc. Dr. Vishal Goyal informed that first task is to collect all train names, station names, routes etc which is also a difficult task because there is no single point of contact in Railways for providing this information.
They will be visiting the New Delhi Railway Station also to find the details about present announcement system into which this system can be integrated without disturbing existing system. System will be proposed to implement on railway stations after its completion using display screens. On display screen, announcements will be played in Indian Sign Language so that any deaf waiting for train can understand what is being announced. This is first of its kind of project throughout the world. Indian Sign Language Research Centre and Training Centre (ISLRTC), Govt. of India, new Delhi will also be consulted time to time during its development for their inputs.
Ministry has associated Sanjay Singh, Deputy Director, ISLRTC along with Punjabi University Patiala team for its execution. Prof. Arvind, Vice Chancellor told that this is an innovative project which will be helpful for deaf community and I am happy that Punjabi University Patiala is taking this lead. Dr. Balvir Singh Sandhu, Dean Academic Affairs congratulated the team for this achievement. Dr. A.K.Tiwary, Dean Research told that Prof. Vishal Goyal has always done innovative and novel projects. He has recently completed project on Plagiarism Detection tool for Indian Language documents with special focus on Hindi and Punjabi and Announcement System for deaf at Railway Stations. Dr. Sukhjeet Kaur Ranade, Head, Department of Computer Science gave his best wishes to the team for the completion of this novel project.
August 20,2021
