On December 12, 2014, I presented “Capturing Your Audience with Kinect” at MoDev Con 2014.
You can find the presentation material below:
The session was recorded, and the video clip should be available soon!
During the summer of 2014, Children’s National Health System in DC invited me and my colleague Amanda Lange to tour their Sheikh Zayed Institute’s Pain Medicine Care Complex. They have been making good use of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor to aid in physical therapy for their young patients.
We were greeted by Chelsea Kling, a coordinator for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. The lobby was inviting with high ceilings and kid-friendly balloons of various colors.
At the Sheikh Zayed Institute’s Pain Medicine Care Complex, we were greeted by Christy Baxter (MSN, MHA, RN, CPN, BA) a Clinical Manager at the pain clinic. Christy gave us a quick overview of what they are currently doing at the clinic.
During Summer 2014, I had the chance to work on a Kinect v2 “Speech Bubbles” app, built upon a sample project from Kinect MVP Tom Kerkhove. In the initial version, I added a speech bubble gets displayed above a person’s head when the person walks into view.
However, this created a problem for multiple people. It was displaying the same text for every person who walked into view, up to 6 people. So, I decided to update the program to display a new random message every time a new person is detected.
I quickly discovered that this created yet another problem: all the displayed messages would get updated for everyone, even when only 1 new person entered the frame. Finally, I added an array of displayed messages (one for each detected body), so that everyone gets their own randomized text.
Now, it was ready to test in the wild… so I used it at HackUMBC, a hackathon event at the University of Maryland Baltimore College.
More Pics from HackUMBC: https://wakeupandcode.com/hackumbc/UPDATE, after July 2014 updates: This blog post was originally published using the alpha version of the Kinect v2 SDK. If you have the updated July 2014 SDK, make sure you start with the updated version of the reference project, written by Tom Kerkhove.
DOWNLOAD SOURCE CODE: https://wakeupandcode.com/public_downloads/SpeechBubblesForKinect.zip
ORIGINAL POST, before July 2014 updates:
When Microsoft released the alpha version of Kinect for Windows v2 via their preview program, I was one of the first to grab the dev kit. I blogged about it in late 2013, after getting it set up with my laptop. As of July 2014, Microsoft has just released the final version of the unit, now available for purchase.
Unlike the previous version of Kinect, the new version now includes the ability to create Windows Store apps. Check out the following MSDN blog post for more information:
If you’re interested in purchasing one for yourself, read on to find out what it has in store for you!
Ever since The Minority Report was released in 2002, gesture-based computer control has been compared to the NUI features shown in the movie. Sure, the Nintendo Wii came out in 2006 with built-in motion control, but it still required the user to hold a controller in their hand.
Minority Report, from Dreamworks Pictures
Fast-forward to 2010, the original Kinect was introduced as an Xbox 360 accessory. This brought gestures and voice control to a home console like never before. In 2012, Microsoft released Kinect for Windows, which allowed any hobbyist developer to build an app or game for Windows using a slightly-modified version of the Kinect.
