Development of a Sign Language Dialogue System for a Healing Dialogue Robot

With the development of human-computer communication technology, it has become feasible to use chat bots for psychotherapy and psychological counseling. However, most of the chat bots are currently geared towards healthy people who can communicate using their voice. For people with Hearing or Speech Disorder (PHSD), it is not convenient to use their voice to communicate, and because of the complexity of sign languages, the current development of chat bots for sign languages are insufficient. Therefore, we propose a new design of a chat bot system for PHSD with Leap Motion gesture recognition. The Leap Motion is used as an information reading device, and then converts the obtained sign language information into text information. To pass the information smoothly, based on the defined processing, the chat bot expresses response behaviors through audio, text, and the facial expressions to the PHSD. This research will have a positive impact on the communication between PHSD and healthy people, and bring more innovative lines of research for robotics industries, sign language interpretation industries and psychotherapy industries.