A comparative study on the sign-language communication systems between Korea and Japan through 2D and 3D character models on the Internet

The sign language can be used as a communication means between ordinary people who have no common language. In order to get over the linguistic barrier, we had developed a 2D model-based sign-language communication system between Korea and Japan on the Internet. From the study, we discovered that there are some problems to be solved for natural animation and real-time transmission in the communication system. In this paper, we employ a 3D character model for the stereoscopic gestures of the sign-language animation, where we utilize CG-animation techniques in order to generate unartificial gestures. For real-time communication, we make use of an intelligent communication method on the client-server architecture. Using the 2D and 3D models, we implement the communication system with Visual C++ 5.0 and Open Inventor on the Windows platforms and experiment on the comparison of their availabilities. Experimental results show that both systems have some properties in their own ways and could be used for non-verbal communication between different languages beyond the linguistic barrier.