Kinect Helps Robot Become Aware Of Humans

Tweet

Kinect privacy concerns keeping you from taking the leap? How about robot apocalypse concerns? No? Well they might now, starting with the ending of this clip you’re about to watch of a tiny robot learning to sense its targets masters  using the bundle o’ sensors that is your (and about a bazillion other people’s) little bundle of Dance Central-supplying, credit card debt inducing joy.

So, 25 million robots that know exactly how to find you sound the least bit scary to you? Although we have to admit the plausibility of that scenario is pretty out there, seeing as how it’s based on something Michael Pachter agrees with. The upside is that every Kinect in the world simultaneously going sentient and raping your Roomba in 2014 sounds more plausible than anything Michael Pachter has ever said, and some of that’s come true, so chin up, it may still happen. Oh, you were rooting for humanity? Yeah, us too… Anyway, this little guy seems a little bummed. Maybe it’s because he just missed starring in the Battlestar Galactica robot montage finale by a year or so. Seems like a lot to us, but to a robot it’s like last Tuesday. The robot is the product of some MIT guys futzing around with the depth camera on a hacked Kinect, using it to build a 3D scene for instance. Riveting stuff, up until “Person detected,etc.” Then it’s just horrifying.