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Man hacks Kinect to help his mother e-mail after stroke. It's been 12 years since Chad Ruble's mother suffered a stroke that led to aphasia, a disorder that affects language processing but not intelligence.

Man hacks Kinect to help his mother e-mail after stroke

Most of the one million Americans who have the disorder experience difficulty both reading and writing, according to the National Aphasia Association, and Chad's mother Lindy was unable to recognize text and thus unable to use a keyboard. So Chad did what any computer-savvy son should: he hacked a Kinect to help her. After designing a visual dashboard of emoticons (happy, sad, angry, tired, etc.), each of which can be further qualified by an amount (expressed as signal strength -- one, two, three, or four bars), Chad says he turned to a Kinect, some gesture recognition code, and the simple OpenNI library for Processing to track the position of his mother's hand. A green arrow button sends the email and a red X resets the screen. "Still," he writes, "it's clear that mom is happy with the result. " (Via TechCrunch) How Top Entrepreneurs Are Using Microsoft's Kinect.

Most people know Microsoft's Kinect as a the motion sensing device you can hook-up to your Xbox to track your moves onscreen while playing virtual tennis or bowling.

How Top Entrepreneurs Are Using Microsoft's Kinect

An accelerator program at Microsoft challenged budding entrepreneurs to create innovative ways to use the Kinect technology — and they created a lot more that just games. Eleven teams of entrepreneurs worked 13 weeks with $20,000 to fine-tune their creations and presented their ideas to a room full of investors on Thursday in Seattle. The companies were selected from 500 that applied from around the world. Kinect-based mood analysis could bolster Microsoft's advertising efforts. Kinect system keeps track of household objects - tech - 07 June 2012.

FITTING your house with a network of Kinect sensors could mean never losing your wallet, TV remote or other small items again.

Kinect system keeps track of household objects - tech - 07 June 2012

"We want to make Google for your home," says Shahriar Nirjon, a computer scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. To do this, Nirjon and colleague John Stankovic developed Kinsight, which records the location of household items using a Kinect depth camera in each room. It works by tracking people and detecting the size and shape of any objects they interact with. Each object is compared to Kinsight's database for the house and either recognised or added to the list. By following the location of objects over time, Kinsight can even distinguish between two identical-looking things - if it records a mug that seems to have jumped from the living room to the kitchen without passing through the space between, for example, it knows it is likely to be two mugs. More From New Scientist Dysentery parasite attacks gut by eating cells alive (New Scientist) Why Retailers Need To Care About Microsoft's Kinect.

Kinect-enabled Kreek interface uses a flexible surface for added depth. Kinect for Windows adds seated skeletal tracking. Microsoft released a new software development kit for its Kinect for Windows sensor today, expanding the capabilities of the platform for software developers building new Kinect apps for Windows PCs.

Kinect for Windows adds seated skeletal tracking

Version 1.5 of the SDK has been making headlines today for adding detailed facial tracking, including the ability to follow the position of the head, movement of eyebrows, and shape of the mouth. But the update also adds support for tracking users when they’re seated, not just when they’re standing. That’s interesting because it’s another example of Microsoft differentiating Kinect for Windows from its Xbox 360 counterpart, enabling different types of uses beyond games in the living room.

The Kinect for Windows blog offers these details on the new feature … Seated Skeletal Tracking is now available. Microsoft's Kinect Being Employed to Help Detect Autism Early. Kinect used for holographic 3D video conferencing. Microsoft patent could hold key to precise Kinect controls. Microsoft's 'Beamatron' combines a projector with a Kinect to augment reality. Microsoft Research is continuing its trend of showing off some pretty cool demos, this time with the "Beamaton" augmented reality system.

Microsoft's 'Beamatron' combines a projector with a Kinect to augment reality

Unlike some other AR experiences, Beamatron strips away the layer of abstraction that comes from looking at the augmented world through a portal, such as the screen of a smartphone or PS Vita. Instead, the system uses a projector and a Kinect sensor on a motorized pan-tilt head to project virtual objects into the real world. Beamatron is able to create a depth map of the physical space around it using the Kinect Fusion software, allowing it to alter the projections to preserve their form on various physical shapes. What's more, the projections can react to the physical dimension of the space, such as colliding with obstacles or falling off elevated surfaces.

In the demo below, a virtual remote controlled car reacts to driving over ramps or people's feet as you'd expect a real car to, and is even stopped by physical walls. Whole Foods Debuts Kinect-Powered Shopping Carts [VIDEO] Doodle Defense game uses Kinect to turn white boards into displays, dry-erase markers into weapons. Use Kinect to teach anatomy? It's a 'Mirracle'!

Kinect hacks have been used for many a grand feat, from a tool that helps the blind navigate more easily to hands-free questing in World of Warcraft and virtual cat brushing.

Use Kinect to teach anatomy? It's a 'Mirracle'!

So why not integrate the powers of Microsoft Kinect with a mirror to teach such subjects as basic anatomy? For the past year, a team out of the Technical University of Munich in Germany has been working on just that. The researchers use Kinect to estimate the position of a person in front of an augmented-reality mirror in order to create the illusion that the user can see inside her own body. Researchers Tobias Blum and Nassir Navab say the tool, which they call Mirracle--for "mirror miracle," I suppose--is largely educational, and report that they installed a prototype of their Mirracle system in the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam in September 2011.

Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop. The Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won’t be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party.

Secret Windows 8 Weapon: Kinect Built Into Your Laptop

Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things. But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft’s various lairs. Unfortunately the laptops were not ready for their debut and no pictures seem to have been permitted. But they are described as netbook-like, with a number of smaller sensors instead of a webcam, and what could be an IR LED at the bottom of the screen. Chip Solar House is powered by the sun and controlled through Xbox Kinect.

The Board of Awesomeness, A Motorized Longboard Controlled by a XBox 360 Kinect Motion Sensor. SandyStation interactive sandbox uses Kinect to make topography much more interesting (video) SmartPal VII: A Humanoid That Can Be Remote-Controlled Via Kinect (Video) We’ve shown you many Kinect-based hacks and applications over the past months, and here is a new one from Japan: major robot maker Yaskawa has developed a humanoid that can be remote-controlled using a Kinect interface.

SmartPal VII: A Humanoid That Can Be Remote-Controlled Via Kinect (Video)

Dubbed SmartPal VII, the telepresence robot can be used to communicate with other people over a distance or even help them cleaning up rooms, for example (by controlling the robot’s arms using Kinect). Yaskawa explains: This robot resembles a person, so it has many degrees of freedom. We’ve given it technology that lets people utilize that freedom easily, just by moving their hands, while the robot itself considers how to move its hand, back, and trolley in optimal ways. SmartPal VII runs on wheels and is equipped with a gyro sensor, improved wrists and arms (the previous version was shown in 2007), a set of touch sensors, an infrared sensor in its head, and a stereo camera with pan tilt. This video (in English, shot by Diginfo TV) provides more insight:

Students Hack The Kinect To Allow Blind To Navigate. Microsoft Strikes Body Blow With Kinect And Windows 8 Fusion. Evoluce Kinect SDK hits the web, gives you an alternative to Microsoft's wares. Evoluce SDK for Kinect released The Evoluce SDK for Kinect and Windows 7 is now available and enables developers to create noncommercial applications with a natural user experience.

Evoluce Kinect SDK hits the web, gives you an alternative to Microsoft's wares

The SDK uses depth sensing information like human motion tracking from devices like the Microsoft Kinect sensor and Asus Xtion Pro. Users will benefit from easy and intuitive applications in areas like events and exhibitions, education, digital signage and healthcare. Microsoft outlines Code Space, looks to include Kinect in conference rooms, PTA meetings.

More Mind-Blowing Real-World Kinect Interaction From Microsoft Research. Microsoft HoloDesk: when you need to juggle something that isn't there (video)