LeWei-LookingOutwards-Kinect
Keyboard Anywhere
This is a project that allows you to place a virtual keyboard onto any surface, such as a desk or the floor. It can be played by pressing or stepping on the surface. I think it’s a really interesting idea because it is so flexible in terms of size and location. You can create a huge keyboard for fun or a small keyboard for actually (pretending to) play the piano. A big issue with this project is that you need some sort of visual cue in the real world to know what keys you’re pressing and where the other keys are located, but this could be fixed with a projector or even just some paper taped to the ground.
Holographic TV
This project from the MIT Media Lab uses a Kinect to record someone and transfers that recording to another computer, which computes a hologram of that person. The idea of this is really cool, because it gives you the ability to send 3D messages which is a pretty futuristic concept. I’m not sure about the execution of this particular project, however. The video doesn’t give a really clear view of what the hologram looks like, and from what I can tell it seems pretty slow and choppy and the image is not very detailed.
Motion Emotions
This is a really simple project that aims to use the Kinect as a way to display emotions. The example above is showing how the program plays a really triumphant sound while the user raises his arms (triumphantly). With the Kinect’s 3D capablities, it is reasonable to suspect that it could be used to measure pretty sophisticated body language, and I think the person had great insight when they decided to take advantage of this. Many of the characters in Kinect games that are supposed to be mirrors of the player don’t show any emotion, and I think it could be interesting to have the characters not only mimic your actions, but take into account what your actions say about your disposition as well.