The Kinect Device is Democratizing Robotics

Why the Kinect Device is democratizing robotics

I recently attended a Robotics event at BotNDolly. The founder showed me some really cool stuff. BotNDolly’s technology gives filmmakers and artists the power of robotic motion control without the complexity. A Maya-based workflow makes it easy to animate the physical world, and a suite of “BD” tools plug into the workflow of a modern film set. Record the first take of a shoot and then use a variety of sensors to track the camera in a 3 dimensional space. The resulting x, y, z space can then be brought into Maya and refined. Robots are not just the stars of film – they now do the filming too.

At that same event there was a panel discussion. If you ask a panel of robot experts what technology greatly helped the field of robotics, Kinect may very well be brought up by more than just one pantelist (at least that is what I witnessed). Developers get all the crazy math done for them by the device, no need to do weird 3-dimensional trigonometric math with velocities and angles so that you can figure out the motion of a body. Kinect delivers that to you on a silver platter.

So I am therefore hosting a robotics event in San Francisco on 8/1. I’ve got a line up of 5 amazing speakers, including some stuff with the Kinect team at MS.

Only a few seats remain for Democratizing Robotics - Build your own virtual agent

https://www.meetup.com/software/events/129686562/

I want to do some type of Kinect demo with the cloud. Maybe I’ll write, “Who the <$@#!$> is eating my Tomatoes App,” that uses infrared to spy on my back garden to see who is eating my ripening tomatoes. The app will take a photo every so many seconds and then I’ll create a time lapsed video. I’ll automatically upload the images to the cloud at night. Some may infrared because I’m also worried about Deer, Racoons, Skunks, and more. The cloud will track and store the photos and hopefully maintain a time lapsed video of them that I can get a link to from an email.

So I laid out some ground work

The links below are to samples that demonstrate a feature. Notice that the language and framework support is spelled out, as of 7/19/2013. This is the starting point for the aspiring Kinect developer. I was inspired by the Kinect at one point, using it as a baby monitor. Well, now I need a garden monitor.

My Original Post

https://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/kinect/Baby-NUI-Using-the-Kinect-as-a-Baby-Monitor

I wanted to chart out the learning path I’m looking at for Kinect. This seems like a great place.

Sample	C#	C++	VB	WPF	DirectX	Additional information
Audio Basics	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj131039	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj131038.aspx	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj131049.aspx	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Audio Capture Raw	No	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh855374.aspx	No	No	No	Available in 1.7.0
Audio Explorer	No	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251722	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Basic Interactions	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=262371	No	No	No	No	Available in 1.6.0
Color Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251726	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251725	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251727	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Controls Basics	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188701.aspx	No	No	Yes	No	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188671.aspx
Depth Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251730	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251728	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251731	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Depth	No	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251733	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Depth with Color	No	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251734	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Face Tracking	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251735	No	No	Yes	No	https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx
Face Tracking Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251736	No	No	Yes	No	https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx
Face Tracking Visualization	No	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251737	No	No	Yes	https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx
Green Screen	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251739	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251738	No	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Infrared Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=262318	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=262319	No	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Kinect Bridge with MATLAB Basics	No	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188693.aspx	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Kinect Bridge With OpenCV Basics	No	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188694.aspx	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Kinect Explorer	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251740	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188699.aspx	Yes	Yes	No	Available in 1.7.0
Kinect Fusion Basics	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188700.aspx	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188696.aspx	No	Yes	Yes	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188670.aspx
Kinect Fusion Explorer	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn193975.aspx	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188697.aspx	No	Yes	Yes	https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn188670.aspx
Shape Game	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251741	No	No	Yes	No	Available in 1.7.0
Skeletal Viewer	No	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251742	No	No	Yes	Available in 1.6.0
Skeleton Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251744	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251743	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251745	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Slideshow Gestures	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251746	No	No	Yes	No	Available in 1.6.0
Speech Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251748	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251747	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251749	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
Tic Tac Toe	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251750	No	No	Yes	No	Available in 1.7.0
WPF D3D Interop	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=259759	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=259759	No	Yes	Yes	Available in 1.7.0
XNA Basics	https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=251751	No	No	Yes	No	https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23714