Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics

BTW it's not just the hardware on the Kinect that's so great...the computer vision component is simply incredible and Andrew Blake's team at MS Research Cambridge deserves the kudos on that.<p>They're solving a <i>very</i> tough problem and doing it really well.<p>Anecdotally, as I was interviewing for various academic positions this year, <i>everyone</i> had a few Kinect projects they were working on. This thing has really sparked an enormous resurgence of interest in stereo/3d-related vision research!

Hi. I'm Kyle Machulis, one of the leads on the OpenKinect project mentioned in the article. If anyone's got any questions on where things are going with the project, I'm happy to answer. I also did a talk on the project at Maker Faire that was recorded:<p><a href="http://fora.tv/2011/05/21/Kyle_Machulis_OpenKinect" rel="nofollow">http://fora.tv/2011/05/21/Kyle_Machulis_OpenKinect</a>

It sounds like how the PS3 commoditized parallel processing thanks to its cheap Cell processor. In a few days it shattered all records of Seti@Home (or was it Folding@home?), and researchers bought PS3s (sometimes building impressive clusters) for all kind of computations.

Take something that sells for $10 and find a way to offer it for $1. And not before long, you can expect an ecosystem to flourish.<p>Technology getting commoditized is a beautiful thing.

<i>And a company called ThriXXX built a rudimentary sex game that allows players to rub women’s body parts with a creepy disembodied hand.</i><p>I was going to ask what the market for this was... but when I compared it to some of the other stuff in that genre that already exists, I guess it isn't <i>that</i> much of a stretch.

That was a great article. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get the projects mentioned up and running on a Mac?

Related: Jennifer Kahn, Profiles, "The Visionary," The New Yorker, July 11, 2011, p. 46 &#60; <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/11/110711fa_fact_kahn" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/07/11/110711fa_fact_...</a> &#62;