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Optical Camouflage Puts Kinect Into Stealth Mode

Posted by timothy on from the where-are-you-anyhow dept.

UgLyPuNk writes "Takayuki Fukatsu, a Japanese coder who works under the name Art & Mobile, has done a bit of trickery with Kinect and openFrameworks. The peripheral will still track your movement and position, but turns your image nearly transparent. Take a look (it's particularly obvious at about 1:30):"

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. The background doesn't change by igreaterthanu · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article states that he hasn't said how it is filling in the gaps, it's really easy to fill in the changes in the background with a static image and this may be how he is doing it, I could achieve the same effect with a regular webcam.

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    I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
    1. Re:The background doesn't change by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's a shade more sophisticated than that. I think he's using the existing make-a-texture-mapped-model-of-the-space code, but telling it to texture map anything that's non-background with an pre-existing image of the background. It's a cute project, obviously intended to recreate the look of the sci-fi cloaking effect, rather than do anything clever. After all, you could achieve a much more effective result by just replacing the feed with one in which the person was not present.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:The background doesn't change by Pseudonym+Authority · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure, maybe you could. But you haven't, so don't be a dick.

    3. Re:The background doesn't change by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Notice how when he walks far back, the distortion goes away and he disappears completely. What does that tell you?
      So, he is using depth info, but what he is doing with it is rather lame. He still has a static image of the empty room, otherwise when the person went far enough back, he would have to appear uncloaked not disappear completely. Of course you would need 2 kinects and much more work to avoid the need for a static background image and just apply the "cloak" to objects nearer than the background. But that would certainly be cool.
      What we have here, you can do better without a kinect by simple diffing of the background image. If he at least used the depth info to alter the distortion it would be interesting, but it seems to me that when he is walking towards or away from the camera the distortion does not change at all.

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  2. a bit slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/02/kinect-now-offers-a-stealth-mode-courtesy-of-optical-camouflage/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qhXQ_1CQjg