Description

Executable: compiled on vogon

Sample Images

The hand between letters.

The hand spelling the letter 'o'.

The hand spelling the letter 'r'

This project is a rough graphical reproduction of the Team Handy Finger Spelling Hand produced for the Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute during the 2008-2009 academic year for ENGR 470/481/482/483: Interdisciplinary Senior Design Project. I wanted to make a graphical representation of this form during the project but I had not taken a class in graphics and as a result I did not want to implement the graphics pipeline myself in order to make this project. As a result I waited until taking this class in order to produce this, even though the beneficial effect it is able to have on the project is now negligable. It does provide an avoidance algorithm that was missing from the project design, which is actually exactly why I wanted to make this in the first place.

Use

• The arrow keys can be used to change the angle the hand is viewed at. The camera is always focused on the hand.
  The mouse can also be used to drag the view about in trackball fashion.
  The '+' and '-' keys can be used to zoom in and out on the hand. The F12 button will reset the viewing angle.


• The letter and number keys all add to the letters to be spelled, with the corresponding letter or number.
  For example, pressing 'E' or 'e' will first drop the thumb into place below the 4 fingers, after which the fingers will curl about the thumb, forming the American Manual Alphabet symbol for the letter 'E'. The hand will then back trace it's movements to a neutral position (a slight adjustment from the number '5') in order to insure that the next letter spelled will not result in a collision.
  
  
• The ESCape key can be used to exit the program.

Of Note

The letters 'r', 'v', and 'z' are actually adjusted variations on the original symbol, these are represented as such in an effort to minimize the number of degrees of freedom required by the model, this decision was made in an effort to reduce the complexity and resulting cost of the physical device produced last year. The variations used here were accepted by SKERI during the original duration of the project.

References

• Past Experience: Team Handy Interdisciplinary Senior Design Project
  I didn't use any of the reference material from the project writeup directly, I actually removed it from my personal computer and didn't bother to look it up, but I did work personally on the project. I know that 2 people graduated at the end of that year by using it as their own senior project so it is likely documented online somewhere but I am currently unaware of exactly where to look for that.
• Sample symbol set
• Previous Final Project