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When you open your Christmas present this year it might not be obvious that you are helping a revolution in sports science. Some of the most popular presents are likely to be mobile phones, games consoles and computer games and the modern stocking filler now contains more sensory technology than an early space mission. The accelerometer chip that prompts your phone to create light-sabre sounds as you swing it is the same technology that we use to help train the world’s best athletes.
This series of posts looks at the Kinect as a potential tool for analysis in Biomechanics. Previously we explored the quality of algorithms which detect a user’s body segments, finding real potential should the appropriate tools be developed. The power of the Kinect comes from its ability to ‘see’ depth, every point on an image can be resolved according to its distance from the Kinect camera. The corresponding point cloud drives many of the amazing functions which give the device so much potential. This post focuses on the point cloud data which can be extracted from the Kinect and work we’ve done to exploit it for Biomechanics.
The depth information from the MS Kinect, colour coded according to distance from sensor
The Hardware
Dubbed ‘the fastest selling electronic product in history’, Microsoft’s Kinect has clearly captured the attention of the gamer. The market was fundamentally changed by Nintendo and the Wii, the Kinect is Microsoft’s attempt at a user-friendly, demographic spanning input device. While the Wii takes signals from a hand-held ‘Wii-Mote’, the Kinect does away with controllers completely.
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