Microsoft shows off hand recognition on the Kinect

Microsoft Research has posted a video preview of hand-gesture recognition on the Kinect.

Several news sites have described the new tech as forming part of Kinect 2.0, the specs for which leaked last month, but it’s not clear from the video if this is the case, or if the work is being done in parallel.

Still fairly basic
In the demo, researcher Cem Keskin describes how his team is using machine learning techniques to enable the Kinect to recognise open and closed hands, enabling software devs to support hand grip and touch events.

By mocap standards, it’s pretty crude stuff (the demo is geared to Windows 8 consumer apps), so it seems unlikely that Kinect-based VFX tools like Brekel Kinect Pro Body will feature finger capture any time soon.

Nevertheless, it’s an interesting glimpse of where the technology is headed.