Microsoft’s Kinect Finds New Life Helping Parkinson’s Patients
A team at Brunel University London has developed a new system, which helps people with Parkinson’s disease overcome debilitating walking problems.
Gamer Combines VR Headset With An Omnidirectional Treadmill
A company called Virtuix has shown what gamers can do when you combine the Oculus Rift VR Headset with their omnidirectional treadmill, bringing true virtual reality gaming into the home.
Microsoft Research Brings Mid-Air Multitouch To Kinect. Control Your Computer Like 'Minority Report'
Microsoft Research recently showed off a Kinect project that allows fine-tuned gesture control. This motion sensing device is now able to read whether your hand is open or closed, bringing mid-air multitouch like what you see in 'Minority Report,' all thanks to a new development of the software.
UK University To Research Stroke Victim Recovery Using The Kinect
Nottingham Trent University is to conduct research using Microsoft's Kinect to help stroke victims.
Kinect Concept 'IllumiRoom' Turns Your Entire Room Into A Video Game
Microsoft Research have lifted the veil on its latest concept named IllumiRoom, which uses a Kinect and a projector to expand video game graphics beyond the boundaries of the television, augmenting the room around it to amazing effect.
Disney Creates Robot That Plays Catch
Disney Research have built a robot that plays a scarily humanlike game of catch, tracking the user and the ball with its eyes. Aimed for use in Disney's theme parks of the future, it can also juggle too.
'Faceshift' Delivers Markerless Motion Capture Via Kinect
So it might not deliver the kind of sophistication in motion-capture that was utilised by Team Bondi for its ground-breaking crime caper L.A. Noire – that, after all, relied on a studio set-up with 32 high-def cameras tracking a single actor’s face – but new facial animation software ‘Faceshift’ does more than an adequate job in replicating such techniques, and it relies solely on Microsoft’s Kinect.
University Researchers Use Xbox Kinect To Control Lasers
Researchers at the University of Dundee have used the Xbox 360 Kinect sensor to control optical tweezers, a set of laser beams used to manipulate particles.
Physicists control the particles through their body movements, which are read by a Kinect-based interface called "HoloHands." While not completely perfect yet, with a latency issue and the occasional misinterpration of the user's movements, the interface has been quite successfully tested moving silica particles.
Mechanical Ceiling Recreates The Feeling Of Being Underwater
The natural subtleties of water's surface is one that many would not assume as up for technological interpretation. That was until artist David Bowen unveiled his installation Underwater: real-time wave patterns captured by a Kinect, and mapped to a mechanical ceiling for recreation.
Microsoft Unveils Gesture-Sensing Wearable Wrist Sensor
In a project headed by Microsoft Research, a team of researchers are busy putting together and testing a new wrist-mounted prototype that can track finger movement to within one hundredth of a centimetre and interpret simple gestures all in real-time.
Leap Motion Introduces Affordable Gesture Control For Your Computer
San Francisco based startup Leap Motion has unveiled what they simple call the Leap: a component the size of a thumb drive that will enable you to control your computer with gestures. Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report and you'll get the general idea.
Xbox 360 Set To Welcome Kinect-Supported Internet Explorer 9
According to The Verge, citing its own “sources”, Microsoft is busy testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 to bring to the console, one that will open up the Bing voice search functionality currently on the dashboard – and also limited to media content only - into a full-fledged internet browser.
Bethesda Bringing Kinect Support, New Functionality To Skyrim
The Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda has today revealed the details surrounding a huge title update for Skyrim that will see the game undergo a flood of well-deserved changes. While added functionality is a given, the developer also dropped a metaphorical bombshell on those who thought third-party support for Microsoft's hands-free motion control device had ground to a halt. That's right, soon we'll all get to shout our “Fus Ra”'s and our “Iiz Slen Nus”'s like the magical wizards we profess to be: Skyrim is being overhauled for Kinect.
Microsoft Researchers Show Off Interactive, Transparent 3D Desktop
Why be confined to using an archaic mouse and keyboard configuration when all you need to interact with your desktop PC is your own two hands? That’s what researchers at Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group will be hoping to pose to its potential consumer base in the near future, that is if their prototype 3D display – which allows users to manipulate on-screen objects with varying hand gestures - ever sees the light of day.
Editorial: How A Dancing C-3PO Represents Everything Wrong With Kinect Development
It happened when the Nintendo Wii was first announced, and then again when Microsoft unveiled the Kinect upon the world: gamers across our universe were filled with anticipation; imagining how motion control would finally bridge the gap between dream and reality, how simple gestures aimed at our TV screens would bring us one step closer to truly feeling like a Jedi. The force is strong in Kinect, after all.
Chaotic Moon's Mind-Controlled Skateboard
Just over a month on from their modestly titled 'Board of Awesomeness,' Chaotic Moon have emerged from the workshop with an improved model, swapping out the Kinect sensor bar in favour for an Emotive EPOC headset, and renaming it to the also modest 'Board of Imagination.'
Simply put, it's an electronic skateboard you control with your mind.
Chaotic Moon's modestly named 'Board of Awesomeness'
Chaotic Moons Labs is showing a 30 mph motorized longboard controlled by the use of Kinect and a Samsung Windows 8 tablet at CES 2012. Being the chiefs of tact, this device has been given the name of the "Board of Awesomeness."
Microsoft builds a new 3D holographic system you can touch
Microsoft Research has unveiled the work they have been doing into a 3D hologram system that allows you to interact with the projections floating in midair, with surprising precision.
The system, code-named Project Vermeer, is able to project a 3D image at 15 frames per second, emulating 192 different viewpoints at a time, and presents a counter-point to what technological implementations there are currently.
Rumour: Kinect 2 Can Lip-Read And Interpret Facial Emotions
The successor to Microsoft’s hugely successful motion-sensing device, Kinect, will be so accurate that it will be able to lip-read and be able to detect human emotion from subtle facial expressions, Eurogamer reports.