Kinect hacks, research, and alternative uses – The Verge

Kinect is helping guard the Korean border

2014-02-03T10:36:31-05:00

Kinect Korean border (Hankook Ilbo)

Microsoft's Kinect sensor has been used in many weird and wonderful ways, including turning a bathtub into a giant liquid touch screen, and its obvious use alongside the Oculus Rift. While it's moving rapidly away from its origins as a games console accessory, self-taught programmer Jae Kwan Ko is extending its use even further as a method of border protection. South Korea and North Korea are separated by a heavily armed border and Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and Ko has developed software and hardware for a system that uses Kinect to detect moving objects.

Hankook Ilbo reports that Ko's system was supplied to the US Army back in August, and it h …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Kinect could make Skype calls less awkward

2013-09-04T06:21:36-04:00

Kinect calling research

Researchers have used Kinect to inject a natural part of face-to-face conversation into video calling: eye contact. Using the Kinect's facial-recognition technology and some specially developed software, the team is able to make it appear callers are looking directly at their conversational counterpart. Essentially, Kinect determines where a caller is looking, and modifies the angle of a their face to make things seem more natural.

More than simply skewing the entire image, the team's software separates the person from their background, adjusts the angle, and then pastes the new image back into the frame in realtime. By maintaining the angl …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Kinect app that turns any surface into a ‘touchscreen’ debuts for $149

2013-08-15T03:51:47-04:00

Ubi Kinect

Microsoft launched a Kinect Accelerator program for startups last year, and the results are starting to be shown. Ubi Interactive worked closely with Microsoft to create a system that uses a projector in combination with a Kinect sensor to create a virtual touchscreen that can be cast onto any surface. As many businesses already have projectors installed, most will simply be able to buy a Kinect for Windows sensor and Ubi's $149 software to turn a projector into a touch-capable unit.

The basic app will support up to 45-inch display sizes, with options to purchase professional ($379) and business licenses ($799) that provide 100-inch support …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Kinect turns your bathtub into a giant liquid touchscreen

2013-08-07T07:05:44-04:00

aquatop

Researchers have created a "touchscreen" for your bathtub. With only a Kinect sensor and a projector, AquaTop display facilitates interacting with virtual objects using just your hands. In order to function properly, the system requires you add some bath salts to your tub, which will turn the water opaque and prevent the camera from picking up false inputs. As a proof of concept, the team at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications Koike Laboratory have created a number of demos that utilize some innovative gestures.

Most of the demos take the form of basic games, allowing you to use two hands to create and channel a ball of energy towa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A virtual reality Paperboy made with Kinect and the Oculus Rift

2013-07-31T14:55:11-04:00

Paperdude

Faced with the possibilities of VR gaming, most people think of chasing dragons in Skyrim or storming compounds in Counter-Strike - but Toronto tech agency Globacore had a simpler idea. They wanted to make a virtual reality version of the classic Atari game Paperboy, powered by an exercise bike, a Kinect camera and an Oculus Rift. A bike tracking widget called Kickr lets the developers track the pedaling speed of the bike, while the Kinect tracks the paper-throwing motion of the arms, and the Oculus Rift brings it all together in an immersive VR environment. The result is called PaperDude VR, and it's a surprisingly thorough combination of V …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Cracking Kinect: the Xbox One’s new sensor could be a hardware hacker’s dream

2013-05-31T13:21:45-04:00

Kinect Xbox One 560

One of the biggest upgrades to Microsoft's recently unveiled Xbox One console is the new and improved Kinect: the device now features a higher fidelity sensor, a larger field of view compared to the original, and better skeletal tracking. This could have some potentially cool applications when it comes to watching TV on your console or playing games, but, like the original Kinect, the most exciting new ideas will likely come from outside of Microsoft and traditional game developers. The hackability of the original Kinect created a healthy DIY movement, and while it's too early to tell if the new version will do the same, there are definitely …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Precognitive robot knows you need help before you do

2013-05-29T06:04:05-04:00

Reactive Robots

A new robot developed by researchers at Cornell University isn't only capable of assisting you with tasks, it can accurately predict when you might need a hand. Armed with a Kinect sensor, the robot - developed by Ashutosh Saxena and his team of computer scientists - utilizes a dataset of 120 videos to analyze and understand your movements. It can then help you perform certain tasks including making a meal, stacking or arranging objects, or taking your medicine.

To detect your actions, researchers use complex algorithms to detect skeletal movements that are assigned to a sub-activity, which include reaching, moving, pouring, eating, and dri …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft working with US military to create Kinect-powered physical therapy system

2012-12-18T16:05:35-05:00

If all goes as planned, Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor camera will be used to help provide physical therapy for injured soldiers and veterans. According to Defense News, the company is working with the Air Force and the Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development, and Engineering Center to create a therapy system that utilizes the camera, a standard PC, and off-the-shelf software. Kinect offers an extremely affordable and effective tool for tracking body movements, and therapy software, such as ReMotion360, is already being used for physical rehabilitation.

Due to the low cost of the device - Kinect for Windows can be purchase …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Watch this: Kinect-powered motion capture mimics your facial movements in real time

2012-11-17T20:08:06-05:00

Faceshift motion capture

Faceshift is a new motion capture utility that does an impressive job of replicating facial movements with barely any noticeable delay. The technology relies on Microsoft's ever-capable Kinect camera to pull in the 3D data it needs to mirror your expressions, though Faceshift's creators have done an admirable job refining the device's face recognition capabilities. Seeing even the most slight movements replicated by an on-screen avatar brings to mind the top-notch motion capture we've seen in the video game industry in recent years, led most notably by LA Noire.

And gaming is an area where Faceshift could present new opportunities to develope …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Watch this: mechanical ceiling mimics the feeling of being underwater

2012-11-01T11:59:54-04:00

via www.designboom.com

The surface of a lake or river is an iconic part of the natural world, but a mechanical version has its own kind of beauty. For his installation Underwater, artist David Bowen mapped real-time wave patterns by putting a Kinect above the water and setting it to capture the water's surface as a plane. That information was then sent to hundreds of motors, which controlled the web above. The result, shown last month at Interieur 2012 in Belgium, is a rippling ceiling that captures the feeling of looking up while being underwater. Bowen's work often focuses on the disconnect between nature and machines, but he says he's increasingly finding that …

Read the full story at The Verge.