With Kinect, Robots Are One Step Closer to Copying Everything About You [Video]

Asimo, the Honda humanoid, one of the world's most loved robots, was showing off its dance moves this week at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco.

The robot was here to demonstrate some new tricks it's been learning from scientists at the Honda Research Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, Behzad Dariush, and colleagues work with Asimo seeking to develop robotics technologies that can assist people, especially in terms of mobility.

In one demonstration, the scientists showed how Asimo can mimic a person's movements in real time. The researchers use Microsoft's Kinect 3D sensor to track selected points on a person's upper body, and their software uses an inverse kinematics approach to generate control commands to make Asimo move. The software prevents self collisions and excessive joint motions that might damage its system and is integrated with Asimo's whole-body controller in order to maintain balance. The researchers say that the ability of mimicking a person in real time could find applications in robot programming and interactive teleoperation, among other things.

In another demo, the scientists showed how they're using gestures to improve Asimo's communication skills. They're developing a gesture-generating system that takes any input text and analyzes its grammatical structure, timing, and choice of word phrases to automatically generate movements for the robot. To make the behavior more realistic, the scientists used a vision system to capture humans performing various gestures, and then they incorporated these natural movements into their gesture-generating system.

This was my first encounter face to face with Asimo, and upon close inspection I noticed something on Asimo's face that I didn't know it was there. Take a look at the photo below. Can you see it?

Photos: Evan Ackerman; video: Erico Guizzo and Evan Ackerman

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Did Apple Just Patent Xbox Kinect? [Apple]

Apple was just awarded a whole mess of patents by the USPTO. But one stands out in particular: a 3D display and imaging system. Wave your hands and the system picks up your movement. Sort of like the Xbox Kinect. Or, uh, exactly like the Xbox Kinect.

The system described in Apple's patent would use a projector with a scanning beam that picks up your movements via a receiver, shown as a secondary device. Your movements are transferred to the system and a user can interact in a virtual space using their body as their only input device:

To be effective, it is also important that such devices be capable, when desired or necessary, of economically but effectively and precisely providing feedback to the user. Thus, such devices should incorporate audio and/or visual mechanisms for reporting to the user the effects and results of the 3D input.

Sound familiar?

Apple does point out that the projector could be used to show holographic imagery, something the Kinect doesn't currently do—well, officially anyway. Think Minority Report meets Kinect.

The patents also indicate Apple's intention to employ the technology in a wide range of applications including medical diagnostics, entertainment, flight simulation, robotics, gaming, and (everyone's favorite 90's buzzword) virtual reality. Microsoft currently uses the tech to make out-of-shape people dance in their living room.

What does this all mean, though? If you'd asked a year ago, I would've said at worst it meant that Apple wouldn't want much more than some licensing fees out of this. But given how aggressively the company's gone after its Android competitors? A little harder to say. [Patently Apple]

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You Are About to Start Shopping with Gestures Thanks to Kinect [Kinect]

It's about time someone did something cool with Kinect that wasn't an art project or a glorified Dance Dance Revolution. A new Mastercard prototype makes it scary easy to buy stuff off your TV with the flick of an arm.

If you're prepared to swipe, snap, and gesture your way into colossal credit card debt, Mastercard has you covered. Mastercard Labs is currently demoing a new shopping and payment system called QkR. It uses all of the smartness of your phone and the vision of Kinect to make buying stuff a breeze. I saw it, and I'm afraid of what my credit card bill is going to look like.

The Kinect gesture-shopping is amazing. While watching a QVC-like infomercial for a silly t-shirt, I simply followed the instructions "wave to buy." A transparant-grey shopping dialogue popped up with fields for size, color and quantity. I bought the shirt, directed the purchase to ship to a stored home address, and I was instantly back at the infomercial, which had been playing behind the dialogue all along.

Got munchies? At one point I was shown that if I performed the sign language for eating—basically just miming the act of stuffing a hamburger in your face—QkR would pull up a dialogue for buying food.

Did I mention that I did this all with gestures? Not typing, dialing or clicking, but motions so simple I could have done them while sitting on my couch holding a beer in the other hand.

Sure, I was basically watching crap, but I used a QkR app loaded onto a Sprint Nexus S to buy products in a lot of different ways that could be incorporated into quality shows. While watching the infomercial, I scanned a QR code from a segment about a flashlight and the app immediately dumped me on a product page. I purchased it in under 30 seconds. Later while watching a television ad for some golf gear, I pressed an ear-shaped icon, and the app listened Shazam-style before pulling up a product page. Bought it. WHAT? I don't even like golf!

There are other examples: I scanned coupons and deals off Facebook. I used the phone's NCF chip to activate a purchase by setting it down on a special coaster. I'm dying to see what Mastercard left behind in the lab because it was all really cool.

The Kinect buying won't catch on unless the hardware starts getting installed natively into new TVs, but the bottom line is that buying shit is going to get really easy. Way easier than 1-Click or buying songs on iTunes. Sure this is only a prototype, but Mastercard's product might just hit the spot. This was the promise of Kinect all along, right? Kinect was going to eliminate barriers. So everyone inhibited by the mouse and multi-touch screens, get ready. In shopping, gestures are the new clicks.

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Xbox Live "Metro" Brings More Bing, Kinect, and Cable TV Integration To the Holidays [Xbox Live]

I sat down with Microsoft the other day to talk about the upcoming Xbox Live refresh that includes fancy new Bing integration, Kinect controlling nearly everything, deeper Facebook integration, and watching live cable TV on your Xbox.

Microsoft talked about partnerships with regional cable providers that would integrate the console with their services. Live TV and video on demand are currently being discussed. Basically, your Xbox becomes a cable box. Some partnerships will include live TV access, others will just be Video on Demand. If you're lucky, your provider will allow you to access both on the Xbox. Like Netflix, you'll be able to chat with friends while watching TV. When asked about DVR capabilities, while they don't have plans for it now, they didn't discount the possibility. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Microsoft intends to announce cable-provider partnerships when the service goes live during the holidays and will continue to announce new partnerships thereafter.

And because telling everyone about your crop situation on Facebook wasn't enough, deeper Xbox Live integration with the social network gives gamers the ability to post all, or only some, of their achievements. Additionally, posting a message about a game via a new feature known as Beacons is intended to announce a game you intend to play to your Xbox and Facebook friends.

The Bing demo was impressive as it featured the ability to search not only the Xbox Live and Zune Marketplace, but also the content of their partners like Netflix, Hulu, and the video on demand libraries of cable partnered cable providers. Gamers can speak their queries via the Kinect or type them in with the control pad.

Users can control nearly every aspect of Xbox Live with Kinect except for the settings portion. So expect to yell and wave your arms in front of your TV while looking for add-ons for your games.

Finally, they showed me the new remote for the Xbox that's expected to hit store shelves in November and set you back $19.99. No, the remote does not have a keyboard and they have no immediate plans to release one with a keyboard which seems like a great opportunity for a third-party hardware developer.

The Xbox Live dashboard refresh, codenamed "Metro," is expected to hit this holiday season.

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