This paper introduces Gesture Engine, an animation system that synthesizes human gesturing behaviors from augmented conversation transcripts using a database of highlevel gesture definitions. An abstract scripting language to specify hand-arm gestures is introduced that incorporates knowledge from sign language research, psycholinguistics, and traditional keyframe animation. A new planning algorithm instantiates and adjusts gestures according to communicative context and temporal constraints obtained from a speech synthesizer. The system animates an MPEG-4 compliant skeleton using Body Animation Parameters. 1

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According to the RNID, 1 in 7 people in the UK have severe hearing loss. Among these, a much smaller number, around 1 in 1000, have been deaf from birth or have never understood speech. For these pre-lingually deaf people, their natural language is often sign. Sign language is a complete natural language, used for culturally-rich communication, with many local dialects and idioms. In the UK, British Sign Language (BDA, 1991) is officially recognised as a minority language. BSL has its own grammar and phonetic structure which is independent of English. Sign language users often have a relatively low reading age for written English, having never learned spoken language. BSL is their language of choice for social interaction. In addition to authentic sign languages, such as BSL, there are also classes of sign language that are closer to spoken forms. In the UK, Sign Supported English (SSE) uses BSL signs in simplified form, presented in English word order. Finger spelling uses BSL signs for the alphabet. SSE is often used in education, but is not regarded as an acceptable alternative to BSL. 1.2 Avatars and Signing Services are increasingly accessed from electronic sources, whether through broadcast television or over the Internet. If services for deaf people are to be provided in sign via digital media, an obvious option is to provide video. The EU

During the past fifty years sign languages have been recognised as genuine languages with their own syntax and distinctive phonology. In the case of sign languages, phonetic description characterises the manual and nonmanual aspects of signing. The latter relate to facial expression and upper torso position. In the case of manual components these characterise hand shape, orientation and position, and hand/arm movement in three dimensional space around the signer's body. These phonetic charcaterisations can be notated as HamNoSys descriptions of signs which has an executable interpretation to drive an avatar. The HPSG sign language generation component of a text to sign language system prototype is described. The assimilation of SL morphological features to generate signs which respect positional agreement in signing space are emphasised.

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We demonstrate a text to sign language translation system for investigating sign language (SL) structure and assisting in production of sign narratives and informative presentations . The system is demonstrable on a conventional PC laptop computer.

Abstract. The empirical investigation of human gesture stands at the center of multiple research disciplines, and various gesture annotation schemes exist, with varying degrees of precision and required annotation effort. We present a gesture annotation scheme for the specific purpose of automatically generating and animating character-specific hand/arm gestures, but with potential general value. We focus on how to capture temporal structure and locational information with relatively little annotation effort. The scheme is evaluated in terms of how accurately it captures the original gestures by re-creating those gestures on an animated character using the annotated data. This paper presents our scheme in detail and compares it to other approaches.