I recently got myself a Kinect for my Xbox 360. I was wondering if there are any other uses for the Kinect. I saw in a documentary that the Kinect could be used alongside a 3-D printer to reproduce anything that is scanned. Can anyone help me in finding out to do this?
Hi Michelle,
Kinect from Microsoft is a motion sensor add-on for the Xbox 360 gaming console. It provides an NUI or Natural User Interface which allows users to interact intuitively without using any intermediary device like a controller. The system that runs Kinect identifies individual players by means of voice recognition and face recognition.
A depth camera, which “sees” in 3D, constructs a skeleton image of a player and a motion sensor detects the movements. With the help of speech recognition software, it allows the system to comprehend spoken commands while the gesture recognition allows the tracking of player movements.
The technology has been applied to real-world applications like digital signage, telehealth service delivery, virtual shopping, education, and other areas of health IT though Kinect was developed mainly for gaming. The doctors at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, in March 2011, started using Kinect to manipulate medical images through gestures during some operations. This allows doctors to interact with the images without leaving the sterile operating area.
