Most of us waste time trying to find a remote that we misplaced. We would overturn a sofa or lift up tables looking for a handheld remote so that we can easily switch channels or play our home theater system. In frustration, we sometimes give up and walk out only discovering that the remote is in our back pocket. However, Microsoft Kinect puts an end to that problem. Microsoft is licensing the 3D camera technology from PrimeSense, an Israel – based company. However, PrimeSense also made deals with other company to push in the feature in home theaters and was set to release next year. However, Microsoft added features to Microsoft Kinect like tilt and voice recognition, which will not be available to other products made by PrimeSense with other deals.
This technology will allow you to control devices using hand motion or gestures rather than the conventional hand held remote control that we often lost.
Voice prompted controls
While it is cool to “tell” Xbox to Pause or Rewind or to tell “Home Theater” to stop playing, the ability to use the hand as a cursor would be more interesting. Aside from pulling you out of “laziness” because all you have to do is to “order” the device, it is also good that you can “stretch” your muscle to do these things. Even if you’re not health conscious, this technology can also help us save time and effort rather than spending thirty minutes looking for the remote control.
Motion – sensing technology
The technology uses a sensor, a horizontal bar on a motorized pivot located below the video display. It has a camera, sensor and microphone running an application that supplies full body motion, facial and voice recognition. Microsoft Kinect interprets the 3D scene captured by the camera. One of the rumored features is that it can track up to six persons, including two active players for motion gaming. It also has the capability to track finger motion, depending on the distance from the sensor.
Advanced Home Technology
Microsoft Kinect still requires efforts from the user. Though it is one of the most advanced technologies in our homes, we must still consider that it is not to replace our actions. This technology is designed to make our work easier and save our time. The motion-sensing technology offers a breakthrough in controlling our devices in such a way that requires little ‘effort” from us, but still requires efforts. But there might be some downside on this. If this technology is installed everywhere in our home, it might make our actions numbered, since we don’t want our coffeemaker make coffees with our “wrong gestures”. We just hope that it will not get to that point.
