Microsoft Research & Development: Kinect - Part 1: An Innovative New Approach

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Happy New Year! 2011 is going to be a huge year and wishing everyone the best!  2010 just passed us but it was not with some big announcements.  Microsoft released the much anticipated Kinect hardware for the XBOX 360 entertainment gaming console.  To kick start the new year, in this 10 part weekly mini series we will explore the origins, science, and applications behind the innovations of the Microsoft Kinect. This motionless controller extension for the Microsoft game console has already revolutionized the entertainment and video gaming worlds while more industries such as medical and business will soon follow.

Never had we been able to experience human and machine interaction without needing to hold or wear some form of input device.  Microsoft Research and Development group is behind the innovation of the Kinect peripheral.  The company's initiative to develop ground breaking ideas into applications from within the company has led Microsoft to fund heavily in creating consumer market products.  The Kinect's functionalities and applications is still a work in progress but the core of its features has been an investment that was worth the wait.  Over 3 years of research, design, development, and proof of concept drafts has been invested across Microsoft's research operations in the United Kingdom, China, and Redmond United States.

 

The idea behind the Kinect came abouts creating a better and more realistic gaming experience than what was on the market 3 years ago.  Taking what Nintendo Wii console had started with motion sensing game play, Microsoft completely took the idea in a whole new innovative direction and eliminated the need of having users hold hardware devices.  This new approach to gaming  has freed up the player's hands and allows for complete degree of freedom.  Microsoft's different research groups collaborated on machine vision language protocol/algorithm technologies which enables the XBOX console to recognize players in front of the hardware's camera.  In part 2 of the Microsoft Research & Development series, we will dive into the concepts and how Microsoft brought machine vision technology to life with XBOX Kinect. 

 

Game Development Tools:  Dreamspark                

 

Part 2:  Machine Vision technologies