Here are my ten ideas for skeleton tracking, ordered from most feasible (that I could do as a project) to least feasible (might require future versions of the Kinect or other future technology):
- Virtual instruments – a person could play air guitar or air drums and hear what they sound like.
- Computerized camera operator – tracking the position of your subject in a 3D space could allow a computer to control a camera with focus, zoom and pan/tilt control to track a person walking around in a space. You could change at a keypress the shot style: Close-up, medium shot, long shot.
- Flag Semaphore training or input device: not sure why we’d want this, but it could be done.
- A game that’s in the POV of a bird, you have to flap your wings and glide to move around a 3D space.
- Fake window – if you know the position of the viewer’s head in relation to the screen, you can do that “fake window” effect. So that when someone leans their head left or right (or moves around a room) the screen seems like a window.
- Fitness – tracking a person to make sure their form is correct throughout all the reps of a particular exercise. It could encourage you to go through the full range of motion and could help moderate the speed when you’re lifting weights.
- Swimmer feedback – Could a Kinect work underwater (if it were enclosed in a waterproof case, of course)? It could give a swimmer live feedback about their form: do their arms cross the center line, are they reaching enough, are they pulling enough, are they tilting enough?
- Space scanner – a device that could be pointed around a room and collect visual and 3D data about a space, making a 3D rendering of it. This would be great for a Google Maps Street View of the indoors, or if you’re moving into a new apartment and want to see how your furniture will fit.
- Perhaps we could identify people by the dimensions of the skeleton and the way they walk?
- A more artistic use: how about a live cartoon rendering of a space, like a building’s lobby? The scene is predrawn and as a cartoon and the people who walk through are “live rendered” as cartoons?
- Retail research – If I were the owner of store, I would love to know how changes I can make affect the flow of people through the stores, what directions they move through a store and what catches their attention, where do they look? With the data for all the people moving through the store, it might be possible to calculate what the average person does as he moves through the store.