Natural Interaction Using the Microsoft Xbox Kinect

Christopher Kimmer, Assistant Professor of Informatics at Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, Indiana

Natural interaction refers to users interacting with computers through intuitive means, similar to the ways humans interact with each other. Natural interactions may rely on speech, gestures, or commands resembling regular speech patterns. Microsoft released the Kinect hardware less than a year ago, adding many natural interaction capabilities to their Xbox gaming console. People quickly "hacked" the Kinect for use with non-gaming systems, and using it to support natural interactions is an active area right now. This talk will give an introduction to the Kinect hardware, describe prominent open- and closed-source methods of software development for the Kinect, and illustrate natural interaction for two sample applications.

Biography
Christopher Kimmer is an Assistant Professor of Informatics at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, IN. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Louisville and has previously held an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Louisville. He has a PhD in Physics from Cornell University and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Louisville. His postdoctoral experience was in multiphysics modeling and simulation at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA, where he was later a staff member and developer for massively parallel engineering and physics codes. His research interests include simulation and model development in high-performance environments, GPU computing, and the dynamics of multiscale systems.