SIGMA-ASL: Sensor-Integrated Multimodal Dataset for Sign Language Recognition

Abstract

Automatic sign language recognition (SLR) has become a key enabler of inclusive human-computer interaction, fostering seamless communication between deaf individuals and hearing communities. Despite significant advances in multimodal learning, existing SLR research remains dominated by vision-based datasets, which are limited by sensitivity to lighting and occlusion, privacy concerns, and a lack of cross-modal diversity. To address these challenges, we introduce SIGMA-ASL, a large-scale multimodal dataset for SLR. The dataset integrates an Azure Kinect RGB-D camera, a millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar, and two wrist-worn inertial measurement units (IMUs) to capture complementary visual, radio-reflection, and kinematic information. Collected in a controlled studio environment with 20 participants performing 160 common American sign language (ASL) signs, SIGMA-ASL provides 93,545 temporally synchronized word-level multimodal clips. A unified sensing framework achieves millisecond-level alignment across modalities, enabling reliable sensor fusion and cross-modal learning. We further design standardized preprocessing pipelines and benchmarking protocols under both user-dependent and user-independent settings, offering a comprehensive foundation for evaluating single and multimodal SLR. Extensive experiments validate the dataset's quality and demonstrate its potential as a valuable resource for developing robust, privacy-preserving, and ubiquitous sign language recognition systems.