A Study on KSL Data Editor for Sign Avatar Motion

The Korean Sign Language (KSL) is a complex visual-spatial language and a natural language linguistically complete. To provide the deaf with a method to communicate each other in a virtual space, we have developed a KSL data editor to generate sign avatar motion and adopted an embodied conversational agent (ECA). The editor is based on a GUI-dialog and the deaf user can edit sign word, hand shape, and body motion data. The avatar synthesizes these data and realizes motion in OpenGL environment to make the user easily use a 3D graphic application. In a hand shape edit module, the user can configure 5 fingers with 3 DOFs at each finger on a dialog, control joint angles, and define 1I hand shape name. The data format of a hand shape DB consists of a hand shape name, hand shape index and angles of five lingers. In a sign word edit module, the user can add, delete and modify all components of a sign word DB and can sec a KSL motion animation. The body symbol means an abbreviated word related to the body motion or facial expression, and is a component of a hyper sign language sentence (HSS).