Posts Tagged ‘kinect hacks’
You Can Give the Kinect the Power of Image Recognition
Written by Dan Nosowitz
Tuesday, 04 September 2012 21:09
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Kinect is Watching You Microsoft

The Kinect can see, but the ability to see objects is different from the ability to recognize objects. You and I, with our eyes and brains that work so effectively, can see a water bottle of pretty much any size, shape, color, or material, and recognize what it's for. But a Kinect is not as smart as we are, and needs a hand to get to our level. That's where you come in.

A team of Swedish researchers is asking Kinect users to use their Kinects as a 3-D scanner to take pictures of various objects for a project known as Kinect@Home. All of those scans will go into a library all Kinects will be able to access, allowing the device to recognize all kinds of different objects. It's obviously valuable; pretty much everything we'd like the Kinect to do could be enhanced by giving it the ability to distinguish between and identify various materials. Only a few days in, Kinect@Home already has nearly 150 scans.

The project is designed for household robots--imagine mounting a Kinect on some kind of wheeled creation, and not only can it see the shapes of objects in a room--it can recognize what they are. "Don't go near the vase!" you could say. And it could understand you! Pretty amazing stuff.

[BBC]



 
Using the Microsoft Kinect to Detect Autism
Written by Dan Nosowitz
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 20:26
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Kids Playing Flickr user Michale

There are five Microsoft Kinects set up all around the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development, but they're not for playing games (or any of the other stuff the Kinect can do with an Xbox). They're monitoring the students, looking for signs of unusual behavior that might indicate a potential autism spectrum disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD--a range of conditions that all fall under the broad term of "autism"--can be difficult to diagnose. Many behaviors, especially in small children, are subtle, little tweaks of behavior that are just enough different from the norm to warrant a closer look. Following the clues is a time-consuming and slow process--it takes hours upon hours of observation, and not everyone can afford a trained specialist (or MRI test) to do that for their child. That can mean undiagnosed and thus untreated children.

The Kinects are set up in the Institute of Child Development to track the individual children by size and the color of their clothing, and can monitor about ten children at a time. Software takes the raw visual data from the Kinects and runs it through an algorithm to look for possible markers of ASD, like an unusually hyperactive or unusually quiet and calm child. It's not designed to replace specialists--it can't really track some telltale signs of ASD, like a failure to make eye contact--but it could be an incredibly cost-effective early heads-up system, making sure that everyone can afford early diagnostics.

[New Scientist]

 
Archaeologists Use a Hacked Kinect To Create 3-D Scans of Dig Sites
Written by Rebecca Boyle
Wednesday, 03 August 2011 17:00
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The future of digging

Archaeological digs are a painstaking process even after the earth has been excavated - artifacts must be carefully catalogued so researchers know exactly where they were found, which tells information about their past. On an upcoming dig in Jordan, a modified Kinect could serve as a 3-D scanner, making this process simpler - and decidedly more high-tech.

Researchers hope students traveling to an archaeological dig in Jordan will use a hacked Microsoft Kinect as a mobile scanning system, making 3-D models of ancient sites that can then be visited in a virtual-reality environment.

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Technology, Rebecca Boyle, 3-d scanners, archaeology, field archaeologist, history, kinect, kinect hacks, scanner
For now, the system relies upon an overhead camera system, so it only works indoors, but computer scientists at the University of California-San Diego want to modify it so it will work in the field. Researchers at UCSD are planning a future trip to archaeological sites in Jordan, where the system could help catalog their finds.

Jürgen Schulze, a research scientist at UCSD's division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), eventually want to use the Kinect to scan entire buildings and neighborhoods. This ability would have applications far beyond archaeology, Fast Company points out.

The modified ArKinect - archaeology and Kinect - would scan an entire dig site, and the data would be used to reconstruct the site in 3-D. Calit2 has an immersive VR system called StarCAVE, a 360-degree, 16-panel setup, which allows researchers to interact with virtual objects. A realistic 3-D portrayal of ancient cookware, for instance, would be a lot more valuable than a 2-D photograph, because it would show more detail and craftsmanship and even help researchers understand how an artifact was used.

"There may be experts off site that have access to a CAVE system, and they could collaborate remotely with researchers in the field," Schulze said in a UCSD release.

The technology could potentially help recovery efforts in disaster zones by digitizing a scene that can then be viewed remotely, he said.

[UCSD via Fast Company]