THE Intelligence Group of Alibaba Cloud, introduced two significant initiatives for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games in Hangzhou, China. These are an app that manages carbon footprint, and an AI translator avatar that assured inclusiveness and understanding of participants to the sporting event.
The Sustainability Web app was developed to encourage environmentally friendly behavior among athletes, journalists, and staff within the Asian Games villages. This was the first important introduction of the Alibaba Intelligence Group
This interactive web app rewards users with carbon points for adopting low-carbon habits, such as using public transportation and reducing waste. Participants can accumulate these points and exchange them for exclusive rewards. So far, the app has seen substantial engagement, resulting in a reduction of over 7 tons of carbon emissions, as it attracted over 310,000 visits to participate in low-carbon activities across the Asian Games villages, and it has recorded over 7 tons of carbon reduction through the activities since the opening of the Asian Games villages on September 16.
“Cloud-based technology helps drive the sustainable and inclusive development of the Asian Games. We want to leverage the power of technology, in collaboration with our partners, to drive more individuals to participate in our efforts to make the Games greener and more accessible to all,” Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence told journalists assembled at a specially organized press conference to discusse the new technologies.
The Alibaba Cloud also presented Xiaomo, an AI-powered digital avatar that acts as a sign language interpreter for individuals with hearing impairments.
Sign language, with its unique blend of gestures, expressions, and body movements, has its own phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar that differ from spoken language. To accommodate these complexities, Alibaba Cloud compiled a Chinese sign language translation dataset that contains 25,000 signs gathered and annotated from sign language practitioners and hearing-impaired people across Zhejiang province in China.
Alibaba Cloud leveraged its advanced visual recognition algorithm and its motion tracking capabilities to capture the movements of the hearing impaired and translate sign language into natural language with a state-of-the-art language translation model. To convert natural language into sign language, Alibaba Cloud also developed a deep neural network and a lip movement generation module, enabling the virtual character to perform sign language gestures accurately.
“Through the integration of natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning technologies, we have developed a sign language translation system. This innovation aims to make the Asian Para Games more inclusive and accessible to those with hearing loss,” Matt Zhang, algorithm engineer at Alibaba Cloud explained.
This technology, already integrated into Alipay, supports two-way translation between sign language and Chinese spoken language. It facilitates seamless communication between those who are hearing-impaired and those who are not. This innovation is driven by a Chinese sign language translation dataset, advanced visual recognition algorithms, deep neural networks, and lip movement generation modules.
Both of these initiatives underscore Alibaba Cloud’s commitment to promoting sustainability and inclusivity, making these major sporting events more environmentally conscious and accessible to all.
