Sign Language AI

Overview

Auslan Assist is a multidisciplinary project in the field of sign language technologies. It aims to develop an automated public announcement system that generates real-time messages in Auslan via a digital avatar. The end goal is a two-way translation system that would also allow Auslan users to sign to information screens and receive an automatic response in Auslan.

A core part of two-way translation is sign language recognition. This VRES project will allow students to explore one or more aspects of AI technology (including but not limited to computer vision, gesture recognition, or natural language processing) for sign language.

The project receives commercial research funding from industry partners including Sydney Trains, Queensland Rail, and Qvest Australia.

Research engagement

Literature review

AI training & evaluation

Potentially end user evaluation

Research activities

Students will have the opportunity to research existing approaches to AI technologies with relevance to the sign language AI space. They will be guided by Dr Jessica Korte and, depending on their exact topic (chosen through discussion with Dr Korte), potentially Dr Maria Zelenskaya and/or Associate Professor Simon Denman

Research skills

Research literature search and evaluation

AI model selection, training and evaluation

Dataset evaluation and selection

Research reporting

Potentially end user research and evaluation skills, including ethics applications

Outcomes

We expect students will train an AI model that engages with at least one element of sign language AI, and produce an oral and written report.

Skills and experience

Desirable:

Some exposure to developing AI technologies AND/OR Strong programming/statistics background

Some familiarity with sign languages AND/OR linguistic concepts

Start date

2 November, 2026

End date

28 February, 2027

Location

QUT Gardens Point

Additional information

Students will be directed to sign up for access to QUT High Performance Computing resources

Keywords

• Auslan
• sign language
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Machine Learning (ML)
• Computer Vision (CV)
• Pose recognition
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Contact

Jessica Korte

jessica.korte@qut.edu.au