Inspiration
Scuba diving relies heavily on communication for safety, but most systems depend on hearing or spoken language. Deaf and hard-of-hearing divers face extra risk underwater, especially when identifying and warning others about dangerous marine life. We wanted to create a tool that makes ocean exploration safer and more accessible for everyone.
What it does
ASL Marine Mentor is an interactive platform that teaches users American Sign Language (ASL) signs for marine animals, especially dangerous species. Users learn how to recognize and sign key creatures so they can communicate risks underwater. After mastering each sign, users also learn important facts like habitat, dangers, and safety tips.
How we built it
We built a web app that integrates AI-powered pose recognition (via Teachable Machine) to detect and evaluate ASL signs in real time. We then used Cursor as to build the interactive platform for users to use.
Challenges we ran into
One major challenge we ran to at first was making pose recognition accurate enough to reliably detect hand signs while filtering out noise (like body movement or background distractions).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to come together to find a solution to an real-world issue we were all passionate about. Each of us were also able to play into our strengths to split up the work, letting us manage the time very efficiently.
What we learned
We learned how to integrate two very different platforms, AI pose recognition and a web application, into one seamless experience. This requires us to understand the limitation that each platform proposed and work around that while still producing smooth valuable for the user.
What's next for ASL Marine Mentor
Next, we want to expand our library of signs in order to maximize efficiency to teach divers about all the possible marine life. We also plan to partner with diving organizations and accessibility groups to bring this tool into real-world diving training.
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