Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been whittling our likeness into bars of soap for decades, but lucky for us someone’s come up with a far easier way to render our flawless good looks in miniature. Following in a long line of inventive Kinect hacks, the folks at Interactive Fabrication have produced a program called Fabricate Yourself that enlists the machine to capture images of users and convert them into 3D printable files. The hack, which was presented at Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in January, results in tiny 3D models that resemble Han Solo trapped in carbonite and sport jigsaw edges that can be used to make a grid of small, but accurate renderings. Fabricate Yourself is still in its infancy, and the resulting models are relatively short on detail, but we’re no less excited by the possibilities — just think of all the things we could monogram in the time it takes to produce one soapy statuette. Video after the jump.

Continue reading Fabricate Yourself Kinect hack turns you into a 3D puzzle piece

Fabricate Yourself Kinect hack turns you into a 3D puzzle piece originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Fabricate Yourself” is like a 3-D photo booth. Using a Microsoft Kinect, anyone can hit a button and have a 3-D model of themselves printed right then. The project, headed by Karl Willis, removes the arcane intricacies of CAD software and replaces them with something anybody can pick up and play with.

Presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference, the setup turns a Kinect into 3-D scanner. The Kinect is hooked up to a Mac, and users can pose in front of it and see a real-time wire-frame representation onscreen. When they see what they like, they hit a button and they are captured in an STL (stereolithography) file. This file is sent to the 3-D printer, where a small, low-resolution model is finally spat out.

At the conference, the models were limited to 3 x 3 cm to keep the machine running fast. This used just a quarter of the Kinect’s resolution, but the results have a rather cute, jaggedy 8-bit look to them. The cuteness was also upped by printing the models onto snap-together jigsaw tiles so they could be combined into one big mural (or even joined together to spell out words).

Taking high tech and making it easy and fun to use is clearly awesome. I am slightly disappointed with the conference-goers’ lack of nerd imagination, though. I have studied the resulting models closely and nowhere do I see the most obvious pose, and the first thing I would do if I could play with this machine: hands held up like Han Solo as he was frozen in carbonite.

Fabricate Yourself [Interactive Fabrication via i.Materialise. Thanks, Joris!]

Photos: Interactive Fabrication

See Also:

• Robotic Spider Melds Legos and 3-D Printing
• HP Plans Line of (Relatively) Affordable 3-D Printers
• Open Source Guitar Kit With 3-D Printed Body
• 3-D Printing, Now in Stainless Steel
• The Secret World of Printing Concept Cars in 3-D

Kinect SKD will launch this Spring, according to a recent blog post by Microsoft. The Kinect SKD will let PC users to use their body as a mouse in Kinect supported PC games.

Here is what Microsoft stated in the post regarding Kinect SKD-

The community that has blossomed since the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 in November shows the breadth of invention and depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology. Already, researchers, academics and enthusiasts are thinking through what’s next in natural and intuitive technology. For example, in January I mentioned Craig’s talk at the Cleveland Clinic, where he highlighted students at the University of Washington’s Biorobotics Lab using Kinect with a commercially available PHANTOM Omni Haptic Device to explore how robotic surgery could be enhanced by incorporating the sense of feel.

The Kinect for Windows SDK is being developed and released by Microsoft Research (MSR) in collaboration with IEB. It will be available this spring as a free download, and will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to key pieces of the Kinect system–such as the audio technology, system application programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor itself.

Microsoft has realized even more of the Kinect’s potential. It might give the company an edge against the iPad craze that Apple has started. I do wonder when Microsoft will release the first selection of software for Kinect SKD.

Via Hot Hardware

Remember that Microsoft Rally Ball demo from a few days ago that showed Windows Phone 7’s integration with Xbox? Well, the gang at Supertouch has stolen a bit of Ballmer’s thunder with a new Kinect hack that lets you hurl digital orbs at your Kinect-controlling friend using an iOS device instead of a WP7 handset. The graphics for the game and the iDevice controls aren’t nearly as pretty as Microsoft’s cross-platform gaming solution, but the end result is pretty much the same — flingin’ balls with a phone while your friend dodges them courtesy of Kinect.

Meanwhile, Frog Design has added a Human Tetris game to the Kinect’s repertoire where players perfect their Vogue-ing skills by striking a pose to match an approaching cut-out on screen. Finally, all the shape-shifting fun with none of the goofy silver jumpsuits. Vids are after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

Continue reading Kinect hackers give us iOS-friendly dodgeball and Human Tetris

Kinect hackers give us iOS-friendly dodgeball and Human Tetris originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Kinect hack turns controlling the TV into light aerobic exercise (video)

Kinect hack turns controlling the TV into light aerobic exercise (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Feb 2011 02:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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