Figure The Kinect sensor data processing hardware. To make everything fit into the slim bar form, the designers had to stack the circuit boards on top of each other. Some of these components produce quite a bit of heat, so a tiny fan that can be seen on the far right of Figure sucks air along the circuits to keep them cool. The base contains an electric motor and gear assembly that lets the Kinect adjust its angle of view vertically. This map is produced entirely within the sensor bar and then transmitted down the USB cable to the host in the same way as a typical camera image would be transferred—except that rather than color information for each pixel in an image, the sensor transmits distance values.
This would be difficult to do over a short distance. Instead, the sensor uses a clever technique consisting of an infrared projector and a camera that can see the tiny dots that the projector produces.
Figure shows the arrangement of the infrared projector and sensor. Figure The Kinect infrared projector and camera. The projector is the left-hand item in the Figure It looks somewhat like a camera, but in fact it is a tiny infrared projector.
The infrared camera is on the right side of Figure In between the projector and the camera is an LED that displays the Kinect device status, and a camera that captures a standard 2D view of the scene. Figure shows my sofa as a person okay, a camera might see it in a room. Figure My sofa. In contrast, Figure shows how the Kinect infrared sensor sees the same view. Figure The sofa as the Kinect infrared sensor sees it. The Kinect infrared sensor sees the sofa as a large number of tiny dots.
The Kinect sensor constantly projects these dots over the area in its view. A camera in night vision mode is sensitive to the infrared light spectrum that the Kinect distance sensor uses. Figure , for example, was taken in complete darkness, with the sofa lit only by the Kinect.
The infrared sensor in the Kinect is fitted with a filter that keeps out ordinary light, which is how it can see just the infrared dots, even in a brightly lit room. The dots are arranged in a pseudo-random pattern that is hardwired into the sensor. You can see some of the pattern in Figure Figure The dot pattern on the sofa arm. And all the jury-rigged foot pads and nunchuks strapped to thighs can't capture whole-body running or dancing like Kinect can.
That's where the Xbox's processor comes in: translating the movements captured by the Kinect camera into meaningful on-screen events. These are context-specific. If a river-rafting game requires jumping and leaning, it's going to look for jumping and leaning. If navigating a Netflix "Watch Instantly" menu requires horizontal and vertical hand-waving, that's what will register on the screen. It has an easier time recognizing some gestures and postures than others. As Kotaku noted this summer , recognizing human movement -- at least, any movement more subtle than a hand-wave -- is easier to do when someone is standing up with all of their joints articulated than sitting down.
So you can move your arms to navigate menus, watch TV and movies, or browse the internet. You can't sit on the couch wiggling your thumbs and pretending you're playing Street Fighter II. It's not a magic trick cooked up by MI Kinect also has a stereo microphone to enable chat and voice commands. The tech on the audio capture is fairly well-known, but it's worth observing that unlike the noise-canceling microphone you might have on your smartphone or laptop's webcam, Kinect has a wide-field, conic audio capture.
This is because, unlike a smartphone, you wouldn't want the Kinect's microphone to capture only sounds close to it: It'd only pick up the sound of the television set. You want it to capture ambient speech throughout the room, such as that emitted by whole groups of people watching sports or playing games. A traditional videogame controller is individual and serial: It's me and whatever I'm controlling on the screen versus you and what you're controlling.
We might play cooperatively, but we're basically discrete entities isolated from one another, manipulating objects in our hands. A videogame controller is also a highly specialized device. For a video game to use the features of the hardware, it must also use the proprietary layer of Kinect software that enables body and voice recognition from the Kinect sensor [source: Rule ]. A further look at the technical specifications for Kinect reveal that both the video and depth sensor cameras have a x pixel resolution and run at 30 FPS frames per second.
The specifications also suggest that you should allow about 6 feet 1. The Kinect hardware, though, would be nothing without the breakthrough software that makes use of the data it gathers. Leap forward to the next page to read about the "brain" behind the camera lens. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close.
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