At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, Ford, among many car companies are revealing and showing off their next generation vehicles. Amidst all the hot rods, the Kinect makes a somewhat undercover appearance at the Ford booth as part of an interactive display installation, spotted by my Australian colleague Jason Cartwright.
Although Ford didn’t use the Kinect to its full potential – it’s only function appears to be to take a photo where the rest of the interaction is still touch-based, the reason they used a Kinect instead of a normal webcam seems to be because the photo they take of a person has the background substituted for a waterfall – easily possible with Kinect’s depth sensors and people-identifying algorithms. The picture is then turned into a puzzle for users to solve.
What’s interesting is that this might be one of the first examples of Kinect used outside of its official gaming functionality in a public manner and I suspect will be a trend for digital displays in the years to come as more companies experiment with interactive signage.
On a similar note, Ford’s direct competitor, General Motors, is also at the show with a Kinect and the Joyride game which features the Chevrolet Volt.
Disclosure: Ford Motor Company paid for my travel and accommodations at the 2-day Driving Green Technology event.
Is that a Kinect sensor, or the PrimeSense sensor? Looks more like the latter to me, based on the shape.
No, it does looks to be Kinect. This is how the primesense version looks like:
http://ces.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Content_63.51.jpg
Primesense has more than one version i think. Either way, it’s effectively the same thing.
Agreed, I think that’s a primesense sensor, which is also used in Kinect, so technically they aren’t really very different.
Uh, isn’t the people-sensing algorithm (which they apparently use in this display) Microsoft-built and thus Kinect-only?
It is clearly the Kinect Sensor. The only reason it looks different is because the wall has a rounded cut out, implying the sensor is round like Primesense.
You know, sometimes I feel as if the Kinect is Microsofts excuse for not given us real gamers a better gaming system. The Xbox 360 is great and making it more like the Wii just does not cut it.
I didnt always think about it like this but I came across an article called “Can you really hate Kinect”. You can find the article here: http://getyourgadgetsgoing.com/2011/01/11/can-you-really-hate-kinect-poll/