Kinect Fusion Coming to Kinect for Windows
Last week, I had the privilege of giving attendees at the Microsoft event, BUILD 2012, a sneak peek at an unreleased Kinect for Windows tool: Kinect Fusion.
Kinect Fusion was first developed as a research project at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K. As soon as the Kinect for Windows community saw it, they began asking us to include it in our SDK. Now, I’m happy to report that the Kinect for Windows team is, indeed, working on incorporating it and will have it available in a future release.
In this Kinect Fusion demonstration, a 3-D model of a home office is being created by capturing multiple views of the room and the objects on and around the desk. This tool has many practical applications, including 3-D printing, digital design, augmented reality, and gaming.
Kinect Fusion reconstructs a 3-D model of an object or environment by combining a continuous stream of data from the Kinect for Windows sensor. It allows you to capture information about the object or environment being scanned that isn’t viewable from any one perspective. This can be accomplished either by moving the sensor around an object or environment or by moving the object being scanned in front of the sensor.
Kinect Fusion takes the incoming depth data from the Kinect for Windows sensor and uses the sequence of frames to build a highly detailed 3-D map of objects or environments. The tool then averages the readings over hundreds or thousands of frames to achieve more detail than would be possible from just one reading. This allows Kinect Fusion to gather and incorporate data not viewable from any single view point. Among other things, it enables 3-D object model reconstruction, 3-D augmented reality, and 3-D measurements. You can imagine the multitude of business scenarios where these would be useful, including 3-D printing, industrial design, body scanning, augmented reality, and gaming.
We look forward to seeing how our developer community and business partners will use the tool.
Chris White
Senior Program Manager, Kinect for Windows
Key Links
- See our Kinect Fusion demo at BUILD 2012 (at 47:30)
- See more photos of Kinect for Windows at BUILD
- Learn about the research behind Kinect Fusion
- Watch the Kinect Design Considerations session at BUILD
- Watch other BUILD 2012 panels
- Visit the BUILD 2012 conference website
Comments
Anonymous
November 05, 2012
Can't wait for next release ;)Anonymous
November 05, 2012
Can't you help that guy? He's wearing a tshirt and a hat, he's obviously a victim of something.Anonymous
November 05, 2012
What resolution could we expect in a typical room? IE x cm resolution at yM - what would "x" and "y" be?Anonymous
November 05, 2012
That jsut looks like its gonna be good. www.anon-you.tkAnonymous
November 05, 2012
Hi Jon, Please post your technical question to the Kinect for Windows forums, where devs/engineers are actively monitoring forums to answer questions. http://bit.ly/KinectSDKForums Thank you!Anonymous
November 06, 2012
Sweet!! I can't wait to get it! I have several apps in mind I want to create using Kinect Fusion. Now when can I plug a Kinect into my Surface?Anonymous
November 18, 2012
how much time it will take to release a new SDK. I am waiting for new SDK....Anonymous
November 20, 2012
That is very, very good news. Kinect was a groundbreaking device at launch, but KinectFusion really takes the whole field of 3D reconstruction and augmented reality to another level. At twnkls | augmented reality we have several projects that can immediately benefit from this capability, so we are very much looking forward to its inclusion in the SDK. (attempting to be) patiently yours, Lex van der Sluijs creative technologist twnkls | augmented realityAnonymous
January 05, 2013
hi there kinect smart glass touch screen tablet controlers gaming hi techAnonymous
January 13, 2013
Hi I am very looking forward to experiment with kinect fusion, the potential is amazing! Is there any information available concerning the release date? Thank youAnonymous
March 06, 2013
Any idea of the timeframe for this release? Weeks, months away? Can't wait to work with this. Kinect and its SDK continues to amaze me.