Kinect Demo Shows Off Hand Recognition, Multitouch

Microsoft Research this week showed off a demo application that allows for Kinect to recognize multi-touch gestures.

At this point, the Kinect sensor can track a person's skeleton, but only views hands as a single point, Cem Keskin, a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, explained in a video demo (below). Redmond researchers wanted Kinect to recognize hand states on top of that, like a closed fist versus an open hand, for example.

"[The] machine-learning project uses a large, varied set of images of people's hands to train Kinect to determine if a hand is open or closed," according to Microsoft Research. "This enables the development of a handgrip detector, which could launch another step forward in natural user interfaces."

Keskin showed off the demo app using the Paint and Maps app within Windows 8. He painted a house using open and closed hands, and then switched to Maps to zoom in and out and rotate maps using only gestures. Closed fists are shown in red, while open hands are blue.

Last year, Microsoft Research showed off other experimental uses for Kinect, like using the human body as a sounding board for Kinect-like applications.

The Kinect was released in Nov. 2010 as an add-on accessory for the Xbox 360. By June 2011, Microsoft released a beta version of the Kinect for Windows SDK, which allowed developers to create new uses for the motion-based system beyond gaming. The official Kinect for Windows 1.0 SDK made its debut in Feb. 2012.

With the next Xbox rumored to be making its debut at the E3 gaming conference this summer, a revamped Kinect sensor is probably in the works as well. Last month, there were reports that the new Xbox is tied heavily to a new Kinect. In fact, the so-called Xbox 720 won't work unless the next-gen Kinect is plugged in, according to Kotaku.

For more, see PCMag's review of the Microsoft Kinect.