Project Kinect for Azure combines AI and Microsoft's next-gen depth camera

Kinect, as it existed for Xbox, may be expressionless, merely its legacy continues to live on. Speaking at its Build 2022 programmer conference, Microsoft announced Project Kinect for Azure, a tool meant to help developers work on new ambient calculating applications.

Microsoft hasn't provided a ton of information on Project Kinect for Azure yet, but what it has looks interesting. The parcel is based on the visitor's "adjacent generation" depth photographic camera, and it packs onboard computing capabilities congenital to run Azure AI services. In combination with Microsoft'south Time of Flying sensor and additional sensors, Project Kinect for Azure tin can be used for mitt tracking, high allegiance spacial mapping, and more. Equally a bonus, the whole thing is minor and power efficient, Microsoft says.

In a blog post today, Microsoft technical fellow and HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman said:

The technical breakthroughs in our time-of-flight (ToF) depth-sensor mean that intelligent edge devices can ascertain greater precision with less ability consumption. There are additional benefits to the combination of depth-sensor data and AI. Doing deep learning on depth images can pb to dramatically smaller networks needed for the same quality outcome. This results in much cheaper-to-deploy AI algorithms and a more intelligent border.

Kipman also confirmed that the Projection Kinect sensor bundle volition be used with the next version of HoloLens. Project Kinect will bring new capabilities to HoloLens, replacing the third-generation Kinect depth sensor used in the electric current HoloLens.

Though Kinect may have received the ax earlier this yr, the tech behind it continues to serve every bit the basis for a range of Microsoft products. Microsoft'due south HoloLens has certainly benefited from the depth sensing piece of work done with Kinect, equally has Windows Mixed Reality equally a whole. Information technology's not surprising to see Microsoft would look to extend Kinect further as information technology focuses on AI and border computing. What will be interesting is to see what kinds of solutions developers volition come up with using Projection Kinect for Azure.

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