Chances are you could be finding the Microsoft Kinect under your Christmas tree this year. If you love to tinker, then it could be much more than a game controller.

Microsoft will likely sell about 5 million Kinects by year-end, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. That has outsold its nearest competitor, the Playstation Move, which he says will probably nly hit 3 million. Both controllers are suposed to provide a more immersive experience by following the movements of a users' whole body.


Take Garratt Gallagher. He's an MIT engineer who really liked the movie The Minority Report and wanted to build a gensture interface like the one in the film. So he delved into the workings of the Kinect and found the hand and finger motion sensor. Now he can play a a virtual piano, complete with music, by simply playing the air with his fingers. He said open-source robotics with the Kinect has limitless possibilities. But it also demonstrates that motion tracking that can be much more useful and have applications beyond gaming.

Willow Garage created the architecture that Gallagher created his code on. The company has created a framework for engineers to hack the Kinect and use its sensor on a mobile robot. With further hacking, the Kinect robot can be used to collect data and stream wirelessly to the host, it can reconstruct 3D images of objects and be directed by natural gestures.


Radiologist Steffen Ross explains in a video that forensic pathologists have historically had issues in trying to interact with PACS datasets. This is because they cannot interact without touching some type of interface, whether it's a keyboard or touch-screen. But touching anything can contaminate the operating room. The only way around that would be to do a full scrub, which is time consuming.

Virtopsy computer scientist Lars Ebert says the Kinect's 3D camera allows them to use gestures to interact with the medical images on the PACS system without touching anything. The team also created voice commands, allowing them to change image angles, light settings and more. Ebert says it's prototype of what could come.

Another Kinect hack, from the University of Washington's BioRobotics Laboratory, has it performing haptics, the art of applying touch sensation with computer applications. With 3D images, University of Washington team used a 3D haptic controller to touch the person within view of the Kinect's camera.

