As you may know, the Kinect is a new video game system from Microsoft that looks at your body through a web cam, identifies your moving parts and allows you to interact with a video game without the need for a controler. Sort of like video games for mimes. (Full disclosure, Microsoft is the "ms" in msnbc.com, which means if I knew how to properly navigate my company's intranet I could probably find a link to buy a Kinect with a company discount.) And now, long story short, the software that makes this possible has been hacked and geeks everywhere are finding new things to do with body motion recognition.
I was impressed at the mouseless browsing idea and even more impressed by the multi-person, multi-touch Minority Report gesture interface. Cooler still was the puppet show and the idea that your body and/or its parts could be represented as something new and different on a screen.
But when you leave behind virtual representations and translate physical body motions into something in the real world, particularly something as cool as a robot, the possibilities just make my brain hurt.
