Earlier this month the Microsoft Kinect was released. As expected, within hours several people from around the world had it up and running; sans XBox. A surprisingly accurate depth camera at a relatively modest price, with open source drivers ready to go, how could I refuse?

Several months ago I threw together an OSX HoloToy demo that used OpenCV and the iSight camera to replicate the facial recognition head tracking used in the iPhone 4/iPod touch version. This seemed like a perfect place to insert the Kinect!

The above video shows various scenes with the perspective controlled via the Kinect. At this point it is simply tracking a specified depth range however with motion tracking of the depth map and other techniques, this could be really special.

Links:

OpenKinect git repo: openkinect.org

A nice overview of current Kinect experiments: creativeapplications.net

iPhone 4/iPod touch head tracking: kode80.com