10 Creative And Innovative Uses Of Microsoft Kinect

The Kinect was released in 2010 as a peripheral for the Xbox 360 and was marketed as a way to add motion controls to games. Microsoft even added it as a peripheral when marketing the Xbox One, boosting features in it such as voice control for the console. While some see it is as nothing more that a video-game add-on, the Microsoft Kinect commands technologies that extend practical usage beyond the gaming realm. After Microsoft released the SDK for Kinect, it has been a vital part in many medical, robotic and other fields, re-invented as part of a homemade hack, a university research project and lots more. Here are just 10 of the innovative ways the Microsoft Kinect is being used. Recommended Reading: 12 Amazing Microsoft Research Projects You Have To See

1. Produce high-Quality 3D Scans

The Kinect Fusion project allows a user to use an off-the-shelf Kinect camera as a 3D scanner for producing high-quality 3D scans of small or large objects. With smaller objects, the user has to move it around in front of the sensor while with large objects, the user moves the sensor to scan it. As said by Shahram Izadi, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, "The amazing thing about this solution is how you can take an off-the-shelf Kinect for Windows sensor and create 3-D models rapidly". The software is available in the Kinect For Windows SDK.

2. Help With Stroke Recovery

[...]