Kinect will recognize sign language

That’s pretty freaking cool. The only sign I know is what friends have taught me. I know diarrhea and some sex ones. Actually, I know a lot of the offensive ones.

A recently published patent confirms that Microsoft’s Kinect will be able to read ASL (American Sign Language). And, if you suck at signing, you can just talk and it can read lips. How cool is that?

The best part is this section of the patent description, which basically says you can taunt in-game, via sign:

…for example, when the user kills another user’s character, that victorious, though speechless, user would be able to tell the other user that he had been ‘PWNED’. In another embodiment, a user may be able to speak or make the facial motions corresponding to speaking words. The system may then parse those facial motions to determine the user’s intended words and process them according to the context under which they were inputted to the system.

I don’t know any deaf people, but I’d bet they’re pretty jazzed about this functionality. It basically adds voice chat in game for the deaf. The patent says ” Under the present system, he could make ASL gestures to convey his thoughts, which would then be transmitted to the other users for auditory display. The user’s input could be converted to voice locally, or by each remote computer.”

How do you sign that this is good news? Two thumbs up?

Kinect Will Recognise Sign Language [Edge]