Implementación de un robot didáctico que enseñe mediante el lenguaje de señas a niños con discapacidad auditiva de educación inicial.

Abstract

A didactic robot was implemented to facilitate the teaching of sign language to children with hearing impairment, this prototype has several stages such as Hardware (printing and assembly), Software (APP), Control, and Communication. For the Hardware stage initially, the arms of the humanoid robot InMoov were selected, which is made up of 6 pieces respectively and then to proceed with the printing made with biodegradable material, once completed the assembly was started including inside an Arduino development board (device controller), actuators, Bluetooth module and drivers for servo motors. For the Software stage, a mobile application was designed using the Android Studio software used as an interface for user interaction with the didactic robot, which allows entering voice and text commands (fingerspelling alphabet, numbers). For the control stage, an algorithm was made with the Arduino software to manage the servo motors and thus carry out the movements of the hands and create the sign language. Finally, in the communication stage, the controller receives the signals of the application through a Bluetooth communication module causing the microcontroller to send commands to the servomotors (10 for each arm) so that they can replicate the movements in sign language. As a result of the tests, an accuracy of 89% was obtained in the reproduction of movements in the fingerspelling alphabet and numbers. With the implementation of this robot, it is intended to facilitate the teaching method due to in Ecuador there is 5.91% of the child population with hearing impairment. It is recommended to carry out a greater number of tests on the didactic robot in a classroom to measure its usefulness and thus find improvements in its design.