
New Kinect will sense more detail, heartbeat and minuscule shifts - fidz
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/new-kinect-is-rocket-science-level-stuff-says-microsoft-1151803
======
nitrogen
If the rumors that the Xbox One won't power on without the Kinect attached are
true, it'll be difficult to convince people to part with their used New
Kinects for more interesting purposes.

I do look forward to seeing what can be done with the higher resolution, and
especially, the higher field of view. My own application of the old Kinect,
home automation, would benefit greatly from a wider FOV. Ditching the tilt
motor was a good idea; I have to tell my customers to mount the Kinect without
the tilt motor anyway due to stability issues.

I don't look forward to a day when everyone has Fahrenheit 451 full-wall
screens (Illumiroom) combined with 1984-style monitoring capabilities (Kinect,
PS Eye, smart TVs with built-in cameras). All the awesome things being done
with modern technology and machine learning could be done on local CPUs
without dialing home. I have to say I'm disappointed, although I'm not sure
whether I'm more disappointed by technology companies for centralizing
information gathering, or by the fact that my junior high librarian told me to
read these books, making me aware of the dystopian possibilities.

~~~
Torn
Are you saying the new kinect offloads the image processing stuff to a cloud
somewhere, like with Siri?

That's absolutely frightening.

Related:
[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/the_eyes_and_e...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/the_eyes_and_ea.html)

~~~
sjtrny
This seems incorrect. The xbox has more than enough processing power to handle
the tasks locally.

~~~
Qworg
The new Kinect has been reported to have all of the processing it needs
internally - and a 2 GB/s data link to push it all down.

I'm really excited to see what price point this comes in at.

------
hkmurakami
The fact that we can get all this for a few hundred bucks sends chills down my
spine. I think even the most diehare pessimists among us can agree that this
is an amazing feat and that while we sometimes end up with "140 characters",
we also get amazing things as a result of our efforts.

~~~
sigkill
And something even crazier is that a hundred bucks today is nowhere as near
valuable as one from even two console generations ago.

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jared314
I wonder if it is using Eulerian Video Magnification[0] or something custom to
do the pulse and motion detection.

[0] <http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/>

~~~
corprew
you can detect heartbeats in infrared light easily, no fancy processing
required -- see <http://www.google.com/patents/WO2004078028A2?cl=en> and
[http://www2.ece.ohio-
state.edu/~anderson/Outreachfiles/Pulse...](http://www2.ece.ohio-
state.edu/~anderson/Outreachfiles/PulseDetector.pdf) for examples.

~~~
vanderZwan
Doesn't that mean it should be possible with the current Kinect as well?

------
sjtrny
For more detail on how the heartbeat detection works read "Eulerian Video
Magnification for Revealing Subtle Changes in the World"

<http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/>

------
bx_
Press 'A' to go forward, Press 'B' to go back.

[A]

You hesitated there. Are you sure?

... [A]

I can sense you're worried, would you like to talk about it?

~~~
benjarrell
Look, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to
sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

~~~
nitrogen
It might help if you added the 2001 citation. Knowing the line was spoken by
an actively hostile computer makes it even more relevant to the article.

------
uptown
Anybody else uncomfortable putting an always-on, always listening for a
command, internet-connected device with a camera and 3D mapping device with
this sensitivity in your living room? It's literally beyond the telescreen
technology described in 1984. Cool - sure ... but jeez, it requires an awful
lot of trust with whoever is on the receiving end of all of that data.

~~~
andyhmltn
Yes. I'm not usually that fussed with privacy. Well, not as much as everyone
else. But this is the thing that's stopping me wanting an Xbox One. Even if
the logs were never looked at or opened, it's incredibly unnerving to know
there is a 24-hour 3d scan complete with video and audio sat on a server
somewhere.

~~~
simba-hiiipower
> _there is a 24-hour 3d scan complete with video and audio sat on a server
> somewhere._

i don't think that's happening. in its lowest power state, described as _wake
on voice_ , the device is listening (which is not the same as recording) for a
prompt to power-on [1]. it validates what it picks-up locally on the device.
only once it confirms (again, checking locally) a command to fully power-on,
are other sensors enabled.

[1] [http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4353580/kinect-always-
liste...](http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4353580/kinect-always-listening-on-
xbox-one-privacy-is-a-top-priority)

~~~
uptown
It's not - but there's literally nothing technologically preventing it from
doing that. It's one thing to put a device incapable of doing something into a
room. It's something entirely different to put a device there with the promise
that they won't abuse that power either by malice or error.

~~~
e1ven
I share your concerns, but it's this also true of most laptops?

I keep a piece of tape over my camera, but there is nothing physically
blocking the microphone.

~~~
uptown
One User Script you may want to install prevents the HTML5 voice input from
being activated. It'll prevent HTML5-based browser voice-input if that's
something you want, but it's worth considering if you don't need that
function.

<https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/110566>

------
richardw
I'm hoping this will won't be as accessible to the security services and
hackers as normal communications seem to be. What are the chances our
heartbeats and small movements won't be interesting to big brother?

When the red light goes on, stop having sex in the TV room. Or hey, install a
Kinect in the bedroom and get a rating afterwards.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I'm pretty sure you could detect _that_ with any old camera sensor, no pulse
detection necessary.

~~~
timthorn
Pulse detection doesn't need HD - it can work with fairly cheap sensors.

------
omnibobble
It sounds like it'll have higher resolution. Exciting to think what developers
will do do once we get our hands on it.

~~~
sjtrny
It definitely does have a higher resolution, an just as importantly it has
lower noise because it has switched from structured IR to TOF. It also doesn't
seem to suffer from the shadowing issues of the previous version.

Kotaku have a great video of it in action and walthrough the new features:
[http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/05/kinect-2-full-video-
walkthr...](http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/05/kinect-2-full-video-walkthrough-
the-xbox-sees-you-like-never-before/)

~~~
mhb
You're saying it uses time-of-flight of _light_? Do you have more information
about that because it seems awfully unlikely.

~~~
modeless
It does seem unlikely, doesn't it? Nevertheless it's true: we now have the
ability to build cameras that measure the distance to each pixel by timing
laser light bounces. Intel sells one too:
[http://forum.libcinder.org/topic/future-is-here-time-of-
flig...](http://forum.libcinder.org/topic/future-is-here-time-of-flight-
camera-for-150-from-intel-with-sdk)
[http://www.interhacktive.org/1/post/2013/01/intel-
creative-d...](http://www.interhacktive.org/1/post/2013/01/intel-creative-
depth-camera-teardown.html)

~~~
vanderZwan
The fact that that's possible at the scale of what appears to be centimeters
is _mindblowing_.

------
ValentineC
Slightly irrelevant, but I immediately thought of this CollegeHumor video
sketch about a self-aware Kinect when I read the article:
[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6452454/kinect-self-
awaren...](http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6452454/kinect-self-awareness-
hack)

------
nano111
you are always looking right before turning right...

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AutocorrectThis
The medical applications of this will be wide, with a heart rate monitor, the
wide angle and being able to detect old people falling etc. I hope they
release the PC drivers and sell a standalone Kinect 2.0 as soon as this hits
the market.

~~~
iamshs
I think standalone Kinect, compatible with Windows PC is coming. This will be
huge, I agree.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4353868/microsofts-new-
kin...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4353868/microsofts-new-kinect-will-
be-coming-to-windows)

