Ever tried banging your head in to a wall? Or thumping your fist against it? The only reaction you must’ve received is of stars hovering over your head or an injured hand. Thanks to Microsoft and the technology behind Kinect, you’ll probably get a different reaction this time when you try thumping your fist or randomly scratching against the wall.
Kinash powered by Microsoft Kinect
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Say hi to Kinash, a digital interactive dashboard that converts walls in to touchable surfaces. Started by Lars Keller (Microsoft MVP) and Karim El Jed from s.t.a.r.t Research and Development as a simple prototype, Kinash is powered by Microsoft Kinect, a revolutionary device which had led to brilliant and path-breaking applications in various diverse fields.
Powered by just a data projector and Microsoft Kinect for Windows, Kinash helps turn any wall surface in to a touchable panel by reflecting the output screen and allowing the user to interact with the data dynamically right on the wall itself. This means you can draw up a large teddy bear on the wall rather than on your 14-inch screen. Kinash comes in two modes: sketch and interactive. The Sketch mode allows a user to sketch on the wall using the fingers while the Interactive mode enables a user to play with complex controls such as throw up an image, load a presentation slide or simple play a video.
According to Channel9, “Kinash uses the depth stream of the Kinect for hand detection and tracking. To control the mouse pointer the hand coordinates are translated to the corresponding position on the screen. To create interactive controls, an optical shape recognition algorithm is used. The combination of different shapes leads to different interactive controls (for example: Rectangle + Triangle = Video Control).”
Draw a rectangle inside another one and you can load your presentation slide; draw a triangle inside a rectangle and you can browse within the video playlist and select a desired file to play. With it just being in the ‘prototype’ stage, Kinash can contribute in many interesting and extremely helpful applications in the near future as the technology behind it progresses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YKpE0A7QxeY
With its launch, Microsoft Kinect has definitely opened up a whole new world of possibilities!
