Faculty of Design

Industrial Design

Siddh Bathla

Ohm: Redefining Virtual Reality Through Sign Language

Ohm builds a sign language based on 26 Micro-Poses and multiple hand gestures. Each phalange or division in your hands acts as a button which can evolve based on contexts and environments (img. 3). This was enabled by two thumb rings with 9 Time-of-Flight sensors, which allowed for granular control and hand recognition for broader gesture recognition.Narrowing the scope of the project to better fit real-world scenarios, Ohm redefines:How we write.How we make music.How we design.This is done by redefining how we control software. To write, we use our keyboard, but with the sign language, our entire keyboard can be transposed to our hands. While using music software, you no longer have to use a MIDI keyboard, but instead you can play the piano in your hands. And while designing in Fusion 360, your hand can evolve throughout different parts of the process, and your toolbar sits in your fingertips.Ohm challenges popular stigmas surrounding virtual reality and proposes an alternative use for this technology. The future of virtual reality should not be a gaming platform or social network. It should allow us to see the future we can create so we can bring it to life.You can go deeper into the project by clicking the link below.

“Ohm is a sign language built to transform the way we interact with Virtual Reality. It is based on the belief that Virtual Reality should enhance real-world experiences and not replace them. It does so by fundamentally changing how we interact with Virtual Reality headsets and creating a new human-computer interface that is based on sign language. It uses Micro-Poses and Hand Gestures to change how we interact with software and execute various functions. By allowing users to create in more meaningful ways with enhanced capabilities, Ohm believes that this will drive real-world innovation in art, product, and technology—ultimately improving real-world experiences.”