I’m not familiar with the superhero Ultra-Seven, but wearing a boomerang on the back of your head seems like a bad idea. The Kinect porn superheros can’t be far behind. Go here for the code.
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We have got plenty of augmented reality links this week, so enjoy the show:
Here’s yet another amazing AR project utilizing the power of Kinect’s sensor. Tobias Blum and Prof. Nassir Navab of TU Munich used a Kinect to overlay CT data on a person in real time, transforming a big screen into a magic mirror. It’s also a good party trick for Halloween. More info here.
Have an excellent week!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Kinect, nokia, Point and Find, Recon, TU Munich, Vuzix | 3 Comments »
As we saw by the recent poll on Games Alfresco, the Kinect is the biggest thing in augmented reality right now. Even since my last review of Kinect, there have been many new innovations. Using Kinect as a real time green screen is becoming an easy reality and fast. Dustin O’Connor has transformed his room into a smoky psychedelic head space. I can only imagine that this setup will become the norm in tripped out raves.
The Kinect also has possibilities as an indie movie special effects tool. Dustin alludes to this possibility:
I could see a bunch of indie type cg / video movie and effects being made with this camera. the kinect may not be as cheap as a can of green paint but defiantly does produce a similar result without the mess.
kinect volumetric fluid occlusion from dustin o’connor on Vimeo.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmented reality, green screen, Kinect, movies | 1 Comment »
The year 2010 was marked by many important milestones and events for the nascent technology. Which one was more important? If I missed one that you thought was important, just add it to the comment section.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AR Games, ARE2010, augmented reality, iphone, Kinect | 4 Comments »
The last year the augmented reality movement has been accelerating at an ever increasing pace as new applications and companies are forming so fast it’s hard to keep up. The addition of the Kinect sensor has given the technology an even bigger power boost and now I can barely keep up with just the Kinect related news, even when I regularly check the Kinect Hacks site.
While I’m certain this list and content would be different in another month, I think there is enough Kinect related stuff to take a look at the top ten uses of the Kinect sensor for augmented reality. Here they are, in no particular order:
10. Play Music
Who says Tom Hanks should have all the fun? I could show you a number of Kinect hacks for playing the piano with your hands, but doing it Big-style is all the more awesome.
9. Graffitti Tool
With the world as your canvas let your artistic soul flow.
8. Lightsaber Battles
Embrace the dark side with your inner Jedi. Be the Star Wars Kid in real-time. Now we just need some game play around the hack.
7. Utilize the technology from the Minority Report
Besides bringing us couch jumping madness on the Oprah show, Tom Cruise also played a part in bringing AR to the big screen. Now you can utilize that same technology on your TV screen.
6. Puppet Shows
Puppets? Puppets are kids stuff right? Unless you’re not counting Chucky, Bride of Chucky, that alien thing that bursts out of your chest, etc.
5. Robot Sight
One of the biggest reasons why robots aren’t more widespread is because they can’t see the world like we do. The Kinect system now gives robot designers a quick and easy way to help their robot see. I’m even investigating using it for our automated logistics delivery vehicles at work.
4. Playing Games
Pretty obvious one, eh? Could find a good dozen games to show you, but I’m a fan of the classics. Besides, there’s that whole Xbox thing you can purchase that has a ton more Kinect games on it. Who knew?
3. Invisibility
Not very useful until AR glasses are in widespread use, but to look like the Predator in your very own living room is spectacular.
2. Projection into Virtual Worlds
Lightsabers, remote projection, space stations; this hack has everything and more. Even more fantastic is that the two people in the video are projecting from separate location. Could Kinect sensors make telepresence more usable?
1. Sign Language Recognition
One of technologies more profound benefits to humankind is the ability to give those with disabilities more access to the world. Just like a translation software, the Kinect sensor can read sign language and convert to human speech. Or teach deaf children how to learn sign language.
Special thanks to Kinect Hacks for continuing to catalog the many wondrous uses of the Kinect sensor.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AR Games, augmented reality, invisibility, Kinect, kinect hacks, lightsabers, projection | 5 Comments »
I just can’t get enough of these Kinect projects. I’m sure I’ll bore of them eventually, but it’s like someone took a blender to reality and starting throwing pieces back in randomly. Give me some functional AR glasses and we can really dive into layers of reality.
Today’s feature is from Yummyfuture (or Matt Bell), who has fired up the blender on another project:
I wrote some software to merge multiple 3D video streams captured by the Kinect into a single 3D space. Objects from each video stream are superimposed as if they occupy the same physical space, with nearby objects from one video occluding more distant ones from another. Sometimes objects overlap, creating interesting mutant forms.
Next, I want to make 3D-merges of cats, dancers, silk aerialists, martial arts experts, that painting Nude Descending a Staircase, that scene from Alien, and much more…
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmented reality, Kinect, kinect hacks, Reality, Yummyfuture | Leave a comment »
The movie Minority Report is often cited as an example and an inspiration for augmented reality. The Microsoft Kinect is bringing that movie magic to the living room.
It uses the Kinect sensor from Microsoft, and the recently released libfreenect driver for interfacing with the Kinect in linux. The graphical interface and the hand detection software were written at MIT to interface with the open source robotics package ‘ROS’, developed by Willow Garage (willowgarage.com). The hand detection software showcases the abilities of the Point Cloud Library (PCL), a part of ROS that MIT has been helping to optimize. The hand detection software is able to distinguish hands and fingers in a cloud of more than 60,000 points at 30 frames per second, allowing natural, real time interaction.
Code available here.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmented reality, Kinect, Microsoft, Minority Report | 1 Comment »
When writing The Digital Sea, invisibility was one of the cool effects I thought was possible with ubiquitous augmented reality. I didn’t expect to see tangible examples so soon. Granted, without AR glasses, all the effects are static on the screen and only eye candy. But what glorious eye candy Fukatsu-san makes. The predator alien would be proud.
The second video from yummyfuture shows us how to make ghost images of furniture (or whatever you’d like to do.)
I think I could watch new Kinect video’s all day.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AR Glasses, augmented reality, invisibility, Kinect, The Digital Sea | 2 Comments »
The Kinect has become the all-in-one sensor bar of choice for modders everywhere. The ability for the Kinect to do facial and gesture recognition, sensing 3D under any ambient light condition, combined with a rapidly expanding hacker tools, has made it indispensable for true AR.
While the Kinect Hacks site has been documenting the every aspect of the accelerating progress, I’m just interested in the applications for augmented reality. This one caught my eye today as the implications reminded me of one of my favorite dystopia films – The Running Man. The resolutions and seamless adjustments are decades away, but it’s fun to imagine anyway.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmented reality, Kinect, kinect hacks, The Digital Sea, the running man | Leave a comment »
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