Towards Arabic Alphabet and Numbers Sign Language Recognition

This paper proposes to develop a new Arabic sign language recognition using Restricted Boltzmann Machines and a direct use of tiny images. Restricted Boltzmann Machines are able to code images as a superposition of a limited number of features taken from a larger alphabet. Repeating this process in deep architecture (Deep Belief Networks) leads to an efficient sparse representation of the initial data in the feature space. A complex problem of classification in the input space is thus transformed into an easier one in the feature space. After appropriate coding, a softmax regression in the feature space must be sufficient to recognize a hand sign according to the input image. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt that tiny images feature extraction using deep architecture is a simpler alternative approach for Arabic sign language recognition that deserves to be considered and investigated.