Word-Conditioned 3D American Sign Language Motion Generation

Lu Dong, Xiao Wang, Ifeoma Nwogu

University at Buffalo, SUNY

Abstract

Sign words are the fundamental building blocks of any sign language. In this work, we introduce wSignGen, a word-conditioned 3D American Sign Language (ASL) generation model designed to synthesize realistic and grammatically accurate motion sequences for signed words. Our approach employs a transformer-based diffusion model, trained and evaluated on a curated dataset of 3D motion mesh sequences derived from word-level ASL videos. By integrating CLIP, wSignGen offers two advantages: image-based generation, which is beneficial for non-English speakers and learners, and generalization to unseen synonyms. Experimental results demonstrate that wSignGen significantly outperforms the baseline model. Moreover, human evaluation experiments show that wSignGen can generate high-quality, grammatically correct ASL signs effectively conveyed through 3D avatars.

Type: Conference Paper

The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP Findings 2024)