Jasper22.NET: Kinect Gestures

Posted by jasper22 at 09:01 | Monday, July 4, 2011

After a long wait- Microsoft finally released the beta SDK for Kinect on PC earlyer this week.

Being one of the first to ever get an XBOX 360, waited for two years for Kinect to arrive (it was called "NATAL" back then) and been waiting for the ability to fiddle with it ever since, I gladly downloaded and installed the SDK.

Well, the first thing to say about is that it's fun!

But, without still going into the raw detail- the main issue is the collection of joints you receive from the SDK whenever data changes.

The SDK defines a list of well-known joints, for each the engine attempts to detect and track, but may also infer from other data.

Let's assume that the Kinect camera is set up in-front of you, while the table hides your toes. Kinect will detect and track you knees but will infer the location of your toes, assuming that you have standard legs...

If Kinect is unable to infer the location of an obscured are of your body, these joints will not be tracked until available.

Here's the list of joints, as defined by the JointID enum:

public enum JointID
{
    HipCenter = 0,
    Spine = 1,
    ShoulderCenter = 2,
    Head = 3,
    ShoulderLeft = 4,
    ElbowLeft = 5,
    WristLeft = 6,
    HandLeft = 7,
    ShoulderRight = 8,
    ElbowRight = 9,
    WristRight = 10,
    HandRight = 11,
    HipLeft = 12,
    KneeLeft = 13,
    AnkleLeft = 14,
    FootLeft = 15,
    HipRight = 16,
    KneeRight = 17,
    AnkleRight = 18,
    FootRight = 19,
    Count = 20,
}