News

November 6

Kinect much more than a game

JANET I. TU The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — At the Lakeside Center for Autism in Issaquah, Wash., three 5-year-olds stand in front of a big screen displaying a river-rafting game. They laugh as they jump or wave their arms, making their on-screen avatars do the same through the use of Kinect motion-sensing technology.

Across the globe, hospitals in Cantabria, Spain, are testing a Kinect application allowing doctors and nurses to wave their arms to pull up patient charts or X-rays.

And Razorfish, a marketing agency that started in Seattle, is experimenting with a retail application using Kinect that would allow shoppers to project their image on a screen to see how various purses they’re considering look as they hold them.

Kinect, launched a year ago to accompany Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming consoles, enables people to control and take part in games using only gestures, body movements or voice commands.

Since then, though, people in different spheres have experimented with using Kinect for other purposes.

Microsoft dubbed the phenomenon the “Kinect Effect” and expects to launch a Kinect for Windows commercial program early next year.

The program is designed to provide tools — mainly a software development kit — to build business applications using Kinect.

It’s a phenomenon that sometimes surprises even its lead creator.

There’s “an amazing amount of stuff that moved me that I did not expect,” said Alex Kipman, general manager of incubation for Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business.

The mission Kipman, a shaggy-haired, jeans- and black-and-white sneakers-clad dude, faced a while ago was to come up with something that could help Microsoft revolutionize entertainment — or at least make it stand above the Nintendo Wii.

The result was Kinect, which allowed users to control the Xbox using only voice and gestures — with no need for controllers — and to see and control physical representations of themselves onscreen on Xbox games such as “Dance Central” and “River Rush.”

Since the launch, Kipman says, what has surprised him is the personal stories he hears from people.

Kipman heard about someone who had bought a Kinect for Xbox because he was a gamer, but his little brother, who is autistic and had never interacted much with either him or with technology, started playing games with him using Kinect.

At the Lakeside Center for Autism, staff members have found the Kinect games helpful on a variety of fronts.

The games work well for kids who are either sensory seeking and under or over responsive because the games provide a biofeedback mechanism for the kids, said founder and CEO Dan Stachelski. Imagine you’re in a totally dark forest — first, you seek a point of reference, Stachelski said. Kids with autism constantly seek that point of reference, so being able to see direct feedback of their actions is helpful, he said.

About six months ago, Microsoft launched a program giving academics a software-development kit for Kinect applications.

Now it’s expanding that program to include commercial entities, with more than 200 businesses, including Toyota and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, involved in a pilot program to launch early next year.

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