Flutter Is Like Kinect For Your Computer’s Webcam Kinect may not be the best way to play games on an Xbox 360, in spite of the fact that some games for the platform are pretty good. However, one place Kinect does shine is in controlling the Xbox interface. It features all kinds of cool gestures that make it easy to control the console without touching the controller. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could get functionality like that on your Mac? With Flutter it’s actually possible, and it’s easier than you might think to get it up and running. Of course, Flutter is not as deep as Kinect, as it lacks the hardware and depth sensing technologies. However, it’s a very useful tool for listening to music and watching videos, as it allows you to skip songs, rewind, fast forward, play, and pause – all with simple gestures. Instead of digging through open windows to find and pause music, you can simply perform a gesture, and save yourself some valuable time. Plus, it feels really cool stopping music with a gesture, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Flutter Is Like Kinect For Your Computer’s Webcam

Kinect may not be the best way to play games on an Xbox 360, in spite of the fact that some games for the platform are pretty good. However, one place Kinect does shine is in controlling the Xbox interface. It features all kinds of cool gestures that make it easy to control the console without touching the controller. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could get functionality like that on your Mac? With Flutter it’s actually possible, and it’s easier than you might think to get it up and running.

Of course, Flutter is not as deep as Kinect, as it lacks the hardware and depth sensing technologies. However, it’s a very useful tool for listening to music and watching videos, as it allows you to skip songs, rewind, fast forward, play, and pause – all with simple gestures. Instead of digging through open windows to find and pause music, you can simply perform a gesture, and save yourself some valuable time. Plus, it feels really cool stopping music with a gesture, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

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Something Clever This Way Comes: Living with the Internet of Things | Business 2 Community

When XBOX first announced its pending release of the Kinect in 2009, they did so under the codename “Project Natal,” and a lot of people completely freaked out. Part of the panic was due to the functionality of the device — the motion-sensing, webcam-enabled peripheral for the more traditional 360 was one (large) step beyond the Wii. But mostly, it was Milo.

Milo is Project Natal’s brainchild. Or really, just child: an artificially intelligent, virtual boy with the ability to recognize people, voices, and even emotions, and the capacity to respond accordingly. Now, he hasn’t made it into our living rooms yet, but people couldn’t help but stare warily at their computers after seeing Milo. Yet, four years later, we have refrigerators that tweet and the potential to save billions of tons of carbon not just through smarter use of technology, but through technology that’s smart.

It’s called the IoT: the internet of things.

The Basics: Getting Our Devices to Communicate

The concept of IoT is certainly not a new one. Comic book artists and sci-fi enthusiasts have been dreaming of worlds saturated with intercommunicating devices for decades. We’re not quite to the point where an iPhone can comb through work emails to inherently generate reminders, but we’re on the way.

Let’s take the Kinect example a little further: the device works by using infrared technology to map out rooms, objects and people in those rooms, and the movements they make. It reacts to pre-set voice commands and can even tell which person is standing in front of it — as long as they’ve already scanned themselves into the system. In order to then take all of that information and translate it into an interactive image on a television screen, it communicates with both the game console and the TV set. And it does it in real time, with no outside interference or direction from the user. Pretty cool, right? What’s really cool about this particular technology is that it’s available to the masses, unlike Bill Gates’ mood-affected paintings. Or personal nanobots (we still want the nanobots, Science).

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Video: Next-gen Kinect sensor.

The sensor inside Kinect was created by PrimeSense, who demonstrate the next generation model called Capri in this video.

Capri is 1/10 the size of previous models, and the company says “we have been able to improve on all aspects of the system” in the device, which can be integrated into tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft is actually only one customer using the system, and does not licence it exclusively. Other companies also using the technology include iRobot, Matterport, and Asus. 

(via 8bitfuture)

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How Will Kinect Change Filmmaking?

Jonathan Minard and James George from RGB D are using the Kinect and a DSLR to reimagine filmmaking. They have created a technique that lets you map video from the camera onto 3D data from the gaming console device, generate a CGI and video hybrid. This could make it easier and cheaper to create 3D films using commercially available hardware and open source software.

via singularitarian:

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South Korea’s Live Park uses RFID and Kinect to bring your Holodeck fantasies one step nearer | Engadget . Located near Seoul, Live Park uses 3D video, holograms and augmented reality, interacting with RFID wrist bands and Kinect sensors to stitch together a continuous immersive story. You (and your avatar!) have 65 attractions, over seven themed zones, and the world’s biggest interactive 360 degree stereoscopic theater to wave, jump and shout your way through. Two years and $13 million in the making, Live Park’s creator d’strict is now looking to license the concept out internationally, with locations in China and Singapore already earmarked.

South Korea’s Live Park uses RFID and Kinect to bring your Holodeck fantasies one step nearer | Engadget

. Located near Seoul, Live Park uses 3D video, holograms and augmented reality, interacting with RFID wrist bands and Kinect sensors to stitch together a continuous immersive story. You (and your avatar!) have 65 attractions, over seven themed zones, and the world’s biggest interactive 360 degree stereoscopic theater to wave, jump and shout your way through. Two years and $13 million in the making, Live Park’s creator d’strict is now looking to license the concept out internationally, with locations in China and Singapore already earmarked.

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Scientists Hack Kinect to Study Glaciers and Asteroids | Wired Science | Wired.com Last summer, Ken Mankoff shimmied through zero degree water and mud into a small cavern underneath Rieperbreen Glacier in Svalbard, Norway, holding a Microsoft Kinect wrapped inside a waterproof bag. Using the little toy, originally meant as a motion-sensing device for the Xbox 360 video game console, Mankoff scanned the cave floor in 3D. During the summer, water from lakes on the glacier’s surface had gushed through the channel he was sitting in. The Kinect was going to provide a better understanding of its size and roughness, which could help researchers predict how the ice above would flow toward the sea. “I’ve always enjoyed repurposing cheap devices, doing things that you’re not supposed to do with them,” said Mankoff, a NASA funded Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz studying ice and ocean interactions. “You know, the hacker ideals.” He is currently a bit of an evangelist for the Kinect, trying to get scientist interested in using the device, which can record very accurate 3D data in visible and infrared wavelengths.

Scientists Hack Kinect to Study Glaciers and Asteroids | Wired Science | Wired.com

Last summer, Ken Mankoff shimmied through zero degree water and mud into a small cavern underneath Rieperbreen Glacier in Svalbard, Norway, holding a Microsoft Kinect wrapped inside a waterproof bag.

Using the little toy, originally meant as a motion-sensing device for the Xbox 360 video game console, Mankoff scanned the cave floor in 3D. During the summer, water from lakes on the glacier’s surface had gushed through the channel he was sitting in. The Kinect was going to provide a better understanding of its size and roughness, which could help researchers predict how the ice above would flow toward the sea.

“I’ve always enjoyed repurposing cheap devices, doing things that you’re not supposed to do with them,” said Mankoff, a NASA funded Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz studying ice and ocean interactions. “You know, the hacker ideals.”

He is currently a bit of an evangelist for the Kinect, trying to get scientist interested in using the device, which can record very accurate 3D data in visible and infrared wavelengths.

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Kinect Hacked For 3-D Scanning Of Archaeology Site University of California, San Diego students will be going to Jordan soon to take part in an archaeological dig that’s decidely futuristic: As they uncover artifacts and structures in the soil, they’ll be using high-quality 3-D scanning to record accurate positional details—rich data that could be incredibly useful in the future. Instead of using expensive and complex imaging systems like LIDAR, however, the team will use a hacked Microsoft Kinect to do the job for them. Full Story: Fast Company via emergentfutures:

Kinect Hacked For 3-D Scanning Of Archaeology Site

University of California, San Diego students will be going to Jordan soon to take part in an archaeological dig that’s decidely futuristic: As they uncover artifacts and structures in the soil, they’ll be using high-quality 3-D scanning to record accurate positional details—rich data that could be incredibly useful in the future. Instead of using expensive and complex imaging systems like LIDAR, however, the team will use a hacked Microsoft Kinect to do the job for them.

Full Story: Fast Company

via emergentfutures:

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