Wish you could use smartphone-style multi-touch controls on your desktop? Now you can, thanks to a Kinect hack by Robert Walter, a computer engineering student at the Berlin Institute of Technology. His algorithm trains the sensor to detect a fixed surface, then looks for "touch pixels" in Kinect's depth image that are very close to the surface, while only identifying a finger as actually touching the surface once the algorithm has found a certain number of touch pixels. He then uses open-source multi-touch software called TUIO to control applications on the computer.
Walter has a number of plans to extend the hack, such as using a projector to overlay a keyboard on your desk. He's also experimenting with 3D surfaces, which would let you control your computer with any object close to hand. "You could build a tangible user interface out of everyday physical objects," he says. "Think of turning up the volume of your stereo by rotating your cup on the table."
Remember last month when we highlighted Sony's efforts to encourage people to hack their own motion controller, the Move? We're yet to see any exciting uses, and they may never emerge as you can now use Kinect on your PlayStation 3. Programmer Shantanu Goel achieved the cross-platform hack by feeding Kinect data in to a PC running a PlayStation controller emulator, which then sends inputs to the PS3 via Bluetooth. Goel uses his hack to control the PS3 menu interface and even play games.
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