Book Image

Augmented Reality with Kinect

By : Rui Wang
Book Image

Augmented Reality with Kinect

By: Rui Wang

Overview of this book

Microsoft Kinect changes the notion of user interface design. It differs from most other user input controllers as it enables users to interact with the program without touching the mouse or a trackpad. It utilizes motion sensing technology and all it needs is a real-time cameras, tracked skeletons, and gestures. Augmented Reality with Kinect will help you get into the world of Microsoft Kinect programming with the C/C++ language. The book will cover the installation, image streaming, skeleton and face tracking, multi-touch cursors and gesture emulation. Finally, you will end up with a complete Kinect-based game. Augmented Reality with Kinect will help you get into the world of Kinect programming, with a few interesting recipes and a relatively complete example. The book will introduce the following topics: the installation and initialization of Kinect applications; capturing color and depth images; obtaining skeleton and face tracking data; emulating multi-touch cursors and gestures; and developing a complete game using Kinect features. The book is divided in such a way so as to ensure that each topic is given the right amount of focus. Beginners will start from the first chapter and build up to developing their own applications.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Augmented Reality with Kinect
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding skeletal mapping


At present, Microsoft Kinect can identify up to six people within the view of the field, but it can only track at most two people in detail at the same time.

The players must stand (or sit) in front of the Kinect device, facing the sensors. If the player shows only a part of his body to the sensors, or wants the sensors to recognize sideways poses, the result may not be accurate, as some part of the skeleton may be in the wrong place, or may jitter back and forth.

Usually, the player is suggested to stand between 0.8 m and 4.0 m away from the device. Kinect for Windows may perform better for near distances because it has a near depth range mode (0.4 m) for use.

In every frame, Kinect will calculate a skeleton image for each person in tracking, which includes 20 joints to represent a complete human body. The positions and meanings of these joints can be found in the following figure:

The skeleton mapping

Note

Kinect uses infrared lights to calculate the depth of...