1.3 Objectives

The objectives of the investigation, and the plan followed in its execution are summarised below:

• To review literature in the field and to summarise certain background material necessary for an informed investigation.

• To select the equipment and resources required for the investigation, while remaining within the financial and temporal constraints of an undergraduate thesis.

• To determine on the exact avenues to be explored, with a view to exploring an original method that appears feasible and assessing its efficacy.

• To construct the framework in which data would be gathered and tested and if necessary, write software for this purpose. This includes:
  • Creating software to interface the glove to the computer if such software did not exist.

  • Creating software to read the data from the glove and record it for later use.

  • Determining what data was to be gathered, including the list of signs that were to be sampled.

  • Constructing a protocol for the recording of the training and testing examples, with a view to minimising random variations.

  • To create a tool for viewing gathered data to provide insigns into the data and to validate its correctness.

  • Creating the necessary conversion program to convert between the output format of the glove and the information required by learning algorithms.

• To examine the data carefully and to try to extract features of the data that would serve as good discriminants between signs when used with the learning algorithms.

• On the basis of the above, assess the feasibility of the system in terms of accuracy, real-time capability, cost and expandability.

• If time permitted, to consider inter-signer recognition (recognition of signs by people on whom GRASP was not trained), in addition to the intra-signer recognition already considered.

• To document the results of the investigation in a manner comprehensible to people in the field and to anyone interested in the findings.