{"id":187340,"date":"2012-01-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T09:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/kinect-solving-an-impossible-problem\/"},"modified":"2016-08-22T11:25:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T18:25:51","slug":"kinect-solving-an-impossible-problem","status":"publish","type":"msr-video","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/video\/kinect-solving-an-impossible-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Kinect: solving an impossible problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>You have probably played with Kinect.  At the very least, I\u2019m hoping you\u2019ve heard of it.    The idea is pretty simple: a special camera looks out from the TV, and tells the XBox about your body position, which allows you to control video games in a way that\u2019s very different from a traditional controller, or even than the Wii.   What you mightn\u2019t realize is that only about 5 years ago, most people thought it was impossible to build such a system with the kind of computing power we have today.   Many scientists and engineers around the world were working on ways of solving the problem (we called it \u201cmarkerless human motion capture\u201d), but it looked far off.   In a tiny way, it was a bit like all the people working on heavier-than-air flight at the turn of the 20th century\u2014although the Wright brothers get the credit, there were many little steps before they made the first sustained flight.  Then, in 2007-2008, several elements came together, and one person at XBox called Alex Kipman suddenly decided it could be done, and gathered a group of people to try to build it.   I\u2019ll talk about the steps leading up to this \u201cimpossible project\u201d, and how we worked to make it possible.   I don\u2019t know what impossible problems the world\u2019s boffins will solve next\u2014invisibilty cloak? anti-gravity? wireless power?\u2014but I hope some of you will one day be involved in changing our future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have probably played with Kinect. At the very least, I\u2019m hoping you\u2019ve heard of it. The idea is pretty simple: a special camera looks out from the TV, and tells the XBox about your body position, which allows you to control video games in a way that\u2019s very different from a traditional controller, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":196646,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[],"msr-video-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-session-type":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"msr-episode":[],"msr-research-theme":[],"class_list":["post-187340","msr-video","type-msr-video","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/0k4M3J-bWw8","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_video_file":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/187340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-video"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/187340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-video-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video-type?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-session-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-session-type?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-episode","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-episode?post=187340"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-theme?post=187340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}