Technology behind Kinect...

We saw in class how amazing thing Kinect can do? If you are curious about the technology behind it, this blog for you.

PrimeSense is the company who invented the technology behind the Kinect and licensed to Microsoft. PrimeSenae developed the method and core software that camera/controller uses to read human bodies and gestures.

Before PrimeSense's technology, most gestural control systems were based on a "time-of-flight" method -- infrared light (or the equivalent: invisible frequencies of light) were sent out into a 3D space, and then the time and wavelengths of light that returned to the specially-tuned cameras would be able to figure out what the space looked like from that. But PrimeSense's method actually encodes information in light patterns as it goes out, and the deformation of those patterns is what the camera looks for.

Once the camera recieves the IR light back, it gets an image similar to the one above -- you can see me sitting with a notepad on the left, and a few other people from PrimeSense around the small room on the right. The computer builds a basic shape of the room it sees through the camera and the people in it, and then the real processing starts.

PrimeSense actually developed a chip that sits right in the camera device, and that's where the camera starts deciphering the image. It looks for any shapes that appear to be a human body (a head, torso, and two legs and arms), and then starts calculating things like how those arms and legs are moving, where they can move (your arms probably can't fold backwards at the elbow, for example), and where they'll be in a few microseconds.

They have been revolutionized the way we interact with machine. It is just starting.
There is more to come.....