Microsoft Kinect Interface Turns 3D Shapes and User Gestures Into Reality

The digital interface innovation has become one of the most exciting areas of research for both developers and engineers alike. And now a new project leveraging the ever expanding possibilities of Microsoft’s Kinect has emerged called inFORM. Crafted at the MIT Media Lab, inFORM offers a peek at an even richer interface dynamic for future devices. With a single Kinect device mounted on the ceiling and capturing the depth image and 2D color image of the user’s hands or any other objects placed under it, sends data over the network to the inFORM surface, which render’s it physically on the inFORM pins. A projector above the inFORM projects the color image of the remote user’s hands onto the rendered shape. While a second Kinect device is mounted above the inFORM surface, next to the projector to represent the captured data on the actuator surface, allowing users collocated with the inFORM to interact with the inFORM using gestures. Read the full details of this stunning breakthrough here.