{"id":14790,"date":"2011-07-13T08:57:29","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T15:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=14790"},"modified":"2011-07-13T08:57:42","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T15:57:42","slug":"wired-kinect-hackers-are-changing-the-future-of-robotics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/14790\/wired-kinect-hackers-are-changing-the-future-of-robotics\/","title":{"rendered":"Wired:<\/em> “Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fascinating story about open source programmers deploying Microsoft’s Kinect hardware in amazing off-label applications.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

From Wired<\/em> magazine:<\/a><\/p>\n

For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it. Roboticists have developed tools to accomplish this task, known as simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. But the sensors required to build that map have traditionally been either expensive and bulky or cheap and inaccurate. Laser arrays cost a few thousand dollars and weigh several pounds, and the images they capture are only two-dimensional. Stereo cameras are less expensive, lighter, and can construct 3-D maps, but they require a massive amount of computing power. Until a reasonably priced, easier method could be designed, autonomous robots were trapped in the lab.<\/p>\n

On November 4, a solution was discovered—in a videogame. That’s the day Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360, a $150 add-on that allows players to direct the action in a game simply by moving their bodies. Most of the world focused on the controller-free interface, but roboticists saw something else entirely: an affordable, lightweight camera that could capture 3-D images in real time.<\/p>\n

Within weeks of the device’s release, YouTube was filled with videos of Kinect-enabled robots. A group from UC Berkeley strapped a Kinect to a quadrotor—a small helicopter with four propellers—enabling it to fly autonomously around a room. A couple of students at the University of Bundeswehr Munich attached a Kinect to a robotic car and sent it through an obstacle course. And a team from the University of Warwick in the UK built a robot that had the potential to navigate around post-earthquake rubble and search for trapped victims. “When something is that cheap, it opens up all sorts of possibilities,” says Ken Conley of Willow Garage, which sells a $500 open source robotics kit that incorporates the Kinect. (The previous non-Kinect version cost $280,000.) “Now it’s in the hands of just about anybody.”<\/p>\n

Robot freaks weren’t the only people to explore the Read more<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fascinating story about open source programmers deploying Microsoft’s Kinect hardware in amazing off-label applications. From Wired magazine: For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[212,379,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-flourishing","7":"category-innovation","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-technology","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14868,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/14868\/get-rich-fighting-crime-save-the-girl-and-make-big-money-doing-it-by-correcting-one-simple-error-in-your-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":14790,"position":0},"title":"Get rich fighting crime! Save the girl — and make big money doing it — by correcting one simple error in your thinking.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The pitch... That's a sweet offer in the headline, don't you think? It's like Batman meets Ironman, but it's all real -- achievable now, no super-human powers required. Not enough? You want more? How's this? I can show you how to all-but-eliminate every sort of street crime. I can show\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14791,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790\/revisions\/14791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}