Kinect sensor poised to leap into everyday life

WHEN Microsoft's Kinect gaming sensor first exploded onto the gaming scene in 2010, it wasn't long before people started getting excited about what it might make possible.

But despite some imaginative hacks, and even a stint in the operating theatre, the breakthrough depth-sensing technology that made Kinect such a success has had a hard time moving beyond the lab or living room. Now the firm behind the 3D sensor at the heart of the Kinect system is pushing to make the leap into a wide variety of consumer fields far removed from gaming.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, Israeli firm PrimeSense showed how their depth sensor, called Carmine, is being put to use in myriad applications. And a smaller version of the sensor may soon be sitting in your smartphone or tablet.

"We're taking it way beyond the living room and putting it into almost anything," says PrimeSense's head of commercial markets, Ohad Shvueli.

Retail is the sector that looks to benefit the most. One firm, Shopperception, uses the sensor to constantly scan the area in front of the shelves in a supermarket to gauge shoppers' behaviour. Because the sensor can track arm movements - just like in Kinect - it knows when a shopper has picked up a certain product. The data is compiled and retailers can see a "heat map" of exactly where on a shelf most customers are reaching.

The sensor is also being put to use by Portuguese firm CoVii, which has written software that lets the sensor turn any simple flat-screen TV or monitor into a "touch-sensitive" device - only the user doesn't have to touch the screen. Because it can detect how far a user's hand is from the screen, it lets people interact by hovering their finger a set distance from the surface - something that would be perfect for interactive advertising displays that could be kept safe behind glass windows.

Meanwhile, California-based Matterport has been using the sensor to cheaply create an accurate, 360-degree 3D scan of a room that is complete within 10 minutes. Such mapping would make buying furniture for your living room a cinch, for example.

Styku, also at CES, has been using the sensor to create a virtual changing room where online shoppers scan their bodies at home and create an avatar to try on outfits to see how they look.

Sean Murphy, an industry analyst for the Consumer Electronics Association, which organises CES, says 3D sensing and gestural control are poised to become a much bigger part of our lives. "It really is the next frontier for getting people interacting with the world around them," he says.

Shvueli agrees, and is pushing hard for the technology to mature into a mainstay of our everyday lives. "Despite Kinect, 3D sensing is a non-existent market at the moment," he says. "We are in the very early stages of making it integrated into everything."

To that end, he says a new version of the sensor, called Capri, will bring depth-sensing to mobile devices. Capri is far smaller than the Carmine sensor, thanks to better heat dissipation. "Once Capri is in a tablet or a smartphone it is going to break the mass market wide open," Shvueli claims. He expects to have Capri sensors installed in commercially available devices next year.

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