kinect

Admit it. There have been times when you've wanted to drop-kick your phone into the next county. But would it be satisfying to use kicking gestures to control your phone? An experimental interface lets you do just that. The idea is to provide an alternative input method when your hands are occupied.

Researchers at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and the University of Manitoba in Canada are developing a smartphone interface that lets you kick to flick, zoom, and navigate menus. The researchers used an Xbox Kinect and tablet to simulate the interface and studied how people do with the kick gesture. A working version would use your phone's camera.

The researchers found that people can reliably kick in five directions and at two velocities, which provides enough variety for useful phone control. (See the video below.)

This could be the first smartphone interface that presents a non-negligible risk of getting you arrested. Kick someone on the sidewalk, and I'm guessing the smartphone-gesture-interface defense isn't going to get you very far with the assault charge.… Read more

We've written about mirrors that tell us more than whether we have a piece of spinach stuck between our teeth. A year ago, a Harvard-MIT student showed off a mirror that's able to read certain vital signs.

Now The New York Times Research & Development Lab is taking things a step further--bringing body tracking, shopping, news, and of course advertising to one's most intimate of places: the bathroom.

The group's "magic mirror" uses LCD and Kinect technology (it's really more of a computer with a reflective surface) that lets users browse the Web while brushing their teeth.

How is this better than using a smartphone in the bathroom? For one, it's hands-free. In fact, in the group's demo, one of the designers simply places a box of meds on the mirror's small ledge; it uses RFID tagging to recognize the type of meds and pull up information about dosages and where to buy more.… Read more

Imagine if you could cut and paste information among your smartphone, tablet, smart table, and big screen. Better yet, what if you could flick objects from one device to another?

Software developer Nsquared has tied together a Windows Phone 7, Slate tablet, Microsoft Surface smart table, and Kinect-controlled big screen into one seamless computing experience. The video says it all (see below).

There are some nifty moments: Put your smartphone down on a Surface--a horizontal touch-screen display that doubles as a table--and the e-mail on the phone screen automatically shows up on the smart table beside the phone, larger. No need to do anything but put the phone down.

Here's another nifty moment: Look at a 3D model of a home on a large projected screen, choose replacement door handles using a separate application on your tablet, then flick them onto the big screen where they're rendered and incorporated into the model. Then grab another door handle from a Silverlight-enabled Web site and likewise flick it into the model. And for the piece de resistance, take a picture of a lamp with the tablet, crop the lamp from the background, and flick it into the model on the big screen.… Read more

At E3 2011 Nyko successfully convinced us that all of our Kinect floor spaces issues would be fixed thanks to the company's Zoom optical Kinect attachment originally scheduled to debut this month.

Unfortunately Kinect owners living in close quarters will have to wait a bit longer for the 40 percent increase in surface area requirements. MTV Multiplayer is reporting that the Nyko Zoom has been delayed about a month to September 13, though the $30 price tag remains unchanged.

MTV Multiplayer says Nyko blames an "overwhelming demand from consumers and retailers" as the cause for a delay. … Read more

Microsoft this morning pushed Avatar Kinect out to Xbox 360 users with its $150 Kinect motion camera accessory.

The software, which was publicly unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES in January, tracks facial movements and applies them to the user's virtual representation onscreen. That means if your head is cocked, or your eyebrows are raised, those same motions get translated onscreen. The technology is bundled into the Avatar Kinect software, which serves as a casual chat room for up to eight people in one of 24 virtual scenes.

The new chat tool joins a handful of other … Read more

Too busy to keep up with today's tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET (and elsewhere) for Friday, July 22.

• Encrypt your data? Here's a scoop you'll want to read: The U.S. Department of Justice swipes at the online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation over encryption passwords. Here's the situation: A Colorado woman named Ramona Fricosu is being forced to decrypt her laptop for police. Phil Dubois, Fricosu's criminal defense attorney, told CNET's Declan McCullagh that "to force my client (assuming that she has the ability) … Read more

A Bay Village, Ohio, company has sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing on its patents with the rapidly selling Kinect motion-sensing video game controller.

Impulse Technology filed the suit in federal court in Delaware, accusing Microsoft and several game makers--including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and THQ--of violating patents related to, among other things, tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space. The suit was filed on July 1, but was only recently written about by the Web site Law360.

Impulse claims that the Kinect violates seven patents, issued from 2001 to last year. In its suit, the company said it notified Microsoft … Read more

While we were less than thrilled with the Kinect Star Wars demo at E3 2011, we're pretty sure this sweet R2-D2-inspired Xbox 360 will sell.

Announced today at Comic-Con 2011, the Limited Edition Kinect Star Wars Bundle will include the custom console with a 320GB HDD, a copy of Kinect Star Wars and Kinect Adventures, a white Kinect sensor, a gold C-3PO-inspired wireless controller, a wired headset, and exclusive downloadable content.

Microsoft formally announced Kinect Star Wars at E3 2011 and demonstrated lightsaber gameplay and force movements. Our own demo netted some awkward results that left an overall stale impression, but we're still eager to see the final product--whenever that may be. The big news today along with the bundle is that podracing will also be a game mode as well.

There's no release date yet for the bundle either, but it'll go for $450. That's not a bad deal if you're starting completely from scratch.

Click through for an enormous detail shot of the R2-D2 Xbox 360 console, complete with a blue--as opposed to green--LED panel.… Read more

You spent countless hours locked in lightsaber battles with your buddies while growing up. What happens when there's no one left to play with you because they all have jobs and babies? You make your own Star Wars playmate.

Students at Stanford University programmed a robotic arm dubbed the JediBot. The bright orange arm swings a red foam lightsaber against a human opponent. It gets off surprisingly snappy attacks with some decent robotic muscle behind it.

It's one thing to create an arm that goes on the offensive, but another to build one capable of defense as well. That's where the Microsoft Kinect comes in. The opposing lightsaber is green so that the Kinect sensors can pick up on where it is in space. The JediBot uses that information to plan its defensive maneuvers.

The robotic arm--which can swing its sword about once every two to three seconds--was created for a 3.5-week Experimental Robotics course. The class also produced a robot that grills hamburgers and even adds the ketchup. The only thing that would make the JediBot better is if it battled you to a draw and then offered you a tasty cheeseburger.… Read more