By Kevin O’ Mahony & John Sheehy
The Kinect for Windows team at Microsoft has offered the Nimbus Centre a place in their upcoming developer kit program. The Kinect for windows team received thousands of applications to this program. Nimbus researchers are excited to be selected and granted access to this exclusive program and innovative Kinect technology before it becomes generally available in 2014. The Nimbus Centre will be provided with development tools and pre-release Kinect sensor, which will contribute significantly to active research projects in fields such as, Assistive Technology for People with Disabilities and Gesture Control for Smart Environments.
These applications use the Kinect in an innovative way, beyond the standard gaming usage of the device. It is envisaged that the advances in interaction with the environment for People with Disabilities, which are being developed in the Nimbus Centre, will be further improved with this technology.
“We’re convinced that your combination of passion for Kinect, technical expertise, and the creativity of your idea will make you an awesome contributor to the evolution of NUI.” – Ben Lower, Microsoft
The Kinect is a 3D motion-sensing camera by Microsoft for the Xbox gaming console and Windows PCs. The Kinect assists people to interact intuitively with interactive systems through recognizing peoples natural interactions, such as free-from gestures and voice commands, without the need for peripheral game controllers and other traditional HCI input devices. The new version of Kinect will be extended with further new capabilities over its predecessor. Some of these exciting new features are provided here
- A 1080p wide-angle time of flight camera
- Processes 2 gigabits of data per second
- Three time more tracking accuracy
- A new active IR sensor providing the ability to track in the dark
- A 60% wider field of view
- Can track 6 users at once
- Detect heart rate & facial expression,
- Track 25 individual joints and the precise rotation of such joints, the weight put on each limb, and the speed of your movements
The Kinect has already formed part of Nimbus research projects and having access to the latest developer kit program will allow us to continue to support research programs whilst also providing the latest technology services to current and future clients.
