Multimedia at Work

Recent advances in 3D depth cameras such as Microsoft Kinect sensors (www.xbox. com/en-US/kinect) have created many opportunities for multimedia computing. Kinect was built to revolutionize the way people play games and how they experience entertainment. With Kinect, people are able to interact with the games with their body in a natural way. The key enabling technology is human bodylanguage understanding; the computer must first understand what a user is doing before it can respond. This has always been an active research field in computer vision, but it has proven formidably difficult with video cameras. The Kinect sensor lets the computer directly sense the third dimension (depth) of the players and the environment, making the task much easier. It also understands when users talk, knows who they are when they walk up to it, and can interpret their movements and translate them into a format that developers can use to build new experiences. Kinect’s impact has extended far beyond the gaming industry. With its wide availability and low cost, many researchers and practitioners in computer science, electronic engineering, and robotics are leveraging the sensing technology to develop creative new ways to interact with machines and to perform other tasks, from helping children with autism to assisting doctors in operating rooms. Microsoft calls this the Kinect Effect. On 1 February 2012, Microsoft released the Kinect Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows (www.microsoft.com/ en-us/kinectforwindows), which will undoubtedly amplify the Kinect Effect. The SDK will potentially transform human-computer interaction in multiple industries—education, healthcare, retail, transportation, and beyond. The activity on the news site and discussion community KinectHacks.net helps illustrate the excitement behind the Microsoft Kinect technology. Kinect was launched on 4 November 2010. A month later there were already nine pages containing brief descriptions of approximately 90 projects, and the number of projects posted on KinectHacks.net has grown steadily. Based on my notes, there were 24 pages on 10 February 2011, 55 pages on 2 August 2011, 63 pages on 12 January 2012, and 65 pages on 18 February while I was writing this article. This comment from KinectHacks. net nicely summarizes the enthusiasm about Kinect: ‘‘Every few hours new applications are emerging for the Kinect and creating new phenomenon that is nothing short of revolutionary.’’