BEIJING, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Baidu AI Cloud, a
leading AI cloud provider, launched an AI sign language platform
able to generate digital avatars for sign language translation and
live interpretation within minutes. Released as a new offering of
Baidu AI Cloud's digital avatar platform XiLing, this platform aims
to help break down communication barriers for the deaf and
hard-of-hearing (DHH) community by boosting the accessibility of
automated sign language translation. An AI sign language
interpreter developed using the platform will perform its duties
during the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics
Games.
Also released along with the platform are two all-in-one AI sign
language translators, providing one-stop solutions with a
streamlined set-up process and plug-and-use features. By enabling
public service deployment in scale, the translators have been
designed for a wide range of use scenarios such as hospitals,
banks, airports, bus stations and other public areas.
With the technology enablement brought by AI, the production and
operational costs of digital avatars have been reduced to a
significant degree, making it possible for AI sign language to go
scale and serve more deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, said
Tian Wu, Baidu Corporate Vice
President.
Today, China is home to 27.8
million deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals but is faced
with a massive shortage of qualified professionals to serve their
needs, with no more than 10,000 sign language translators, a gap
especially felt in medical and legal settings.
The XiLing AI sign language platform and the all-in-one sign
language translators are designed to fill this significant gap and
address the communication difficulties facing the DHH community in
both online and offline settings. For DHH individuals who want to
study or socialize online without barriers, the platform can be
quickly integrated into commonly used mobile applications,
websites, and mini programs within a few hours, performing
functions like sign language video synthesis and livestream
synthesis, text-to-sign language translation, and audio-to-sign
language translations.
The all-in-one translators are tailored for offline scenarios to
improve the accessibility of public services. Baidu's translators
come with two models, a full offline version V3, and a
cloud-connected version P3. Both are embedded with core functions
of the AI sign-language platform, able to realize ASR speech
recognition, speech translation, and portrait rendering. This full
range of functions offers incredible potential for empowering the
DHH. For instance, DHH individuals will be able to visit the
hospital and manage the complicated process of registration,
consultation, payment, and medicine collection without further
assistance. Additional applications hold the potential to allow the
DHH community to travel, dine, and even work independently.
Technical Deep Dive
Compared to translations between spoken languages, the sign
language translation is more complicated mainly because it is not
translated word by word from verbal speech. Instead, the language
refinement and word order must be adjusted in order to show the
actual meaning of the sentence. As a relatively rarely-used
language, a very limited amount of data on sign language is
available for machine learning. It also requires lip language and
facial expressions to assist understanding. In real-world settings,
solutions are often faced with complex environmental factors making
them difficult to deploy. All these practical barriers have posed
numerous challenges to the development of AI sign language.
To make AI sign language comprehendible, Baidu scientists had to
resolve three key challenges: the clarity of speech recognition,
the accuracy of sign language translation, and the fluency of sign
language movements.
To address speech recognition clarity, the XiLing AI sign
language platform uses Baidu's home-grown SMLTA speech recognition
model to achieve end-to-end modeling speech recognition through
integrating acoustics and language. Based on Baidu's self-developed
deep learning algorithm, targeted training can enable word accuracy
in a wide range of fields such as tourism, medical care, and legal
proceedings.
In terms of the accuracy and refinement of sign language
translation, Baidu has built the first neural network-based sign
language translation model with a controllable degree of
refinement, which can automatically learn sign language translation
knowledge from real data such as word order adjustment, word
mapping and length control to generate natural sign language that
conforms to the habits of hard-of-hearing people.
To ensure the accuracy of the sign language translation, Baidu
has invited over 500 scholars and students with hearing loss in
China to help enlarge and vet the
sign language corpus, with many joining the project as volunteers.
Tiantian Yuan, associate dean of
Technical College for the Deaf, Tianjin University of Technology, said she and
her students feel incredibly honored to have contributed their
parts in collaborating with Baidu to fill in this gap for the
community.
To ensure the fluency of sign language actions, the AI sign
language platform has sorted nearly 11,000 actions based on the
National Universal Sign Language Dictionary with its "action fusion
algorithm", so that all digital sign language gestures have the
degree of coherency and expression as human sign language. In
addition, with the help of 4D scanning technology, the accuracy of
mouth shape generation has been optimized up to 98.5%.
About Baidu:
Founded in 2000, Baidu's mission is to make the complicated
world simpler through technology. Baidu is a leading AI company
with strong Internet foundation, trading on the NASDAQ under "BIDU"
and HKEX under "9888." One Baidu ADS represents eight Class A
ordinary shares.
Media Contact
intlcomm@baidu.com
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SOURCE Baidu, Inc.