With the success that we experienced with our first Kinect experiment fresh in our minds, we have moved on and started working with the freenect library. Shown below is our first test using the freenect library. You will see the two outputs that the Kinect has, a regular video output(shown right) and an infrared output which can detect objects in 3D using a projected grid of dots (shown left).

After a bit more research into what is used to actually start making things happen with the Kinect, we found that an other layer is required to actually interpret and make use of the output of the freenect library. This layer will be the OpenCV library which stands for Open Computer Vision. This tool will allow the computer to detect edges and objects which we will then use to interpret body parts and thier movement.

OpenCV is a very broad topic and is what we are focusing our efforts on understanding now.

Look for more updates soon…