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Kinect Used To Help the Visually Impaired

Posted by Soulskill on from the kitchen-sink-peripherals dept.

Zothecula writes "The decidedly low tech white cane is still one of the most commonly used tools to help the visually impaired get around without bumping into things. Now, through their project called NAVI (Navigation Aids for the Visually Impaired), students at Germany's Universität Konstanz have leveraged the 3D imaging capabilities of Microsoft's Kinect camera to detect objects that lie outside a cane's small radius and alert the wearer to the location of obstacles through audio and vibro-tactile feedback." In addition, Kinect is being used to "manipulate medical images during surgery without having to leave the operating room and scrub back in," and in more artistic ways as well.

8 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Kinect by maroberts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Should be able to manipulate images like in Minority Report with it. Does seem to be one device from Microsoft that it is hard to criticize. If only their mobile phones were as innovative....

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    1. Re:Kinect by binarylarry · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All microsoft did was license the Kinect and it's software from PrimeSense and slap a badge on it.

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    2. Re:Kinect by somersault · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think the "multi array mic" and motorised tilt must account for the extra space. You'd want decent separation between the mics at least if you're going to use them for position prediction.

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      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:Kinect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I love how quick you are to say that, as if it mattered at all. That's...offtopic at best. A special variety of flamebait where you try to shut down any hint of non-criticism for Microsoft. PrimeSense deserves credit, but you only gave them credit incidentally in your mission to remove credit from Microsoft.

      It's like somebody said Firefox was a good product from Mozilla, and you replied "all Mozilla did was license (via GPL) Netscape and slap an icon on it". Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Firefox. And it's not really accurate: Netscape code is just one piece of the puzzle of Firefox, although a very important one; likewise, PrimeSense is a very important piece of the Kinect puzzle, but not the whole thing.

      It's not like PrimeSense was or is selling these to consumers en masse and Microsoft is just stealing their thunder or something.

    4. Re:Kinect by citizenr · · Score: 2

      I know it's just a rendering...
      http://www.primesense.com/?p=487 ...but why is the Kinect so much larger than their reference design?

      4 microphones array for audio 3d localization

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    5. Re:Kinect by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      It could also be that the reference design is a bit... optimistic... about thermals(or case in that render is supposed to be 3/4 cm of solid aluminum...) It is possible that MS was just jumpy after the RROD incidents; but I'm guessing that they didn't add some extra volume and a fan just because they really wanted some moving parts and a higher BOM cost.

      Apparently the laser dot-pattern projector unit even has a peltier element(according to iFixit's teardown). That means both higher costs and nontrivially increased power requirements. It also suggests that reliable operation of that critical part requires not merely good heat dissipation(for which a little chunk of finned copper and some airflow are sufficient) but temperature stability.

      I'm not going to accuse Primesense of lying, they know their product better than I do; but the Kinect's thermal design suggests that either MS is seriously gun-shy about overheating incidents, or the technology being used is touchier than one might expect, or expect to cool in that reference enclosure.

  2. Huge amount of respect to Microsoft by awjr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft have quietly sat there and let people play and even gone as far as to begin the process of releasing an official Windows API for the device and the sales figures for the Kinect are through the roof. It's an amazing piece of kit.

    If this had been Sony this would have been a legal fight from beginning to end.

    1. Re:Huge amount of respect to Microsoft by Xest · · Score: 2

      I think that thing was really a massive misunderstanding.

      At issue was talk of "hacking" the Kinect, when really people were just figuring out how to interface with it. What Microsoft seemed to be concerned about and threatening about was people actually hacking it to give them an unfair advantage in Kinect based games as opposed to simply interfacing with it via a PC.

      It seemed to come down to abuse of the term hacking.