Microsoft Files Several Applications For Kinect-related Patents

This is what you and your friends see

Microsoft has filed applications related to their motion control camera device, Kinect. They were submitted over a year ago in May 2009, but have just today been published.

They've filed various applications such as Gestures Beyond Skeletal, which is a way for a computer-type device to read gesture input data:

Systems, methods and computer readable media are disclosed for gesture input beyond skeletal. A user's movement or body position is captured by a capture device of a system. Further, non-user-position data is received by the system, such as controller input by the user, an item that the user is wearing, a prop under the control of the user, or a second user's movement or body position. The system incorporates both the user-position data and the non-user-position data to determine one or more inputs the user made to the system. 

This is what Kinect sees

They have also filed an application for extending standard gestures:

In a system that utilizes gestures for controlling aspects of an application, strict requirements for success may limit approachability or accessibility for different types of people. The system may receive data reflecting movement of a user and remap a standard gesture to correspond to the received data. Following the remapping, the system may receive data reflecting skeletal movement of a user, and determine from that data whether the user has performed one or more standard and/or remapped gestures. In an exemplary embodiment, a gesture library comprises a plurality of gestures. Where these gestures are complementary with each other, they may be grouped into gesture packages. A gesture package may include gestures that are packaged as remapped gestures or a gesture package may include options for remapping standard gestures to new data.

Gesture Shortcuts:

Systems, methods and computer readable media are disclosed for gesture shortcuts. A user's movement or body position is captured by a capture device of a system, and is used as input to control the system. For a system-recognized gesture, there may be a full version of the gesture and a shortcut of the gesture. Where the system recognizes that either the full version of the gesture or the shortcut of the gesture has been performed, it sends an indication that the system-recognized gesture was observed to a corresponding application. Where the shortcut comprises a subset of the full version of the gesture, and both the shortcut and the full version of the gesture are recognized as the user performs the full version of the gesture, the system recognizes that only a single performance of the gesture has occurred, and indicates to the application as such.

Gesture Tool: 

Systems, methods and computer readable media are disclosed for a gesture tool. A capture device captures user movement and provides corresponding data to a gesture recognizer engine and an application. From that, the data is parsed to determine whether it satisfies one or more gesture filters, each filter corresponding to user-performed gesture. The data and the information about the filters is also sent to a gesture tool, which displays aspects of the data and filters. In response to user input corresponding to a change in a filter, the gesture tool sends an indication of such to the gesture recognizer engine and application, where that change occurs.

Gesture Coach:

A capture device may capture a user's motion and a display device may display a model that maps to the user's motion, including gestures that are applicable for control. A user may be unfamiliar with a system that maps the user's motions or not know what gestures are applicable for an executing application. A user may not understand or know how to perform gestures that are applicable for the executing application. User motion data and/or outputs of filters corresponding to gestures may be analyzed to determine those cases where assistance to the user on performing the gesture is appropriate.

 

While all of these are related to gesture controls and how the device reads your movement and translates it into an action the game or computer it's interesting to see how many patents Microsoft hopes to acquire based on one device. It's not unusual, but it shows some interesting thing about how our patent system works.

As see know, Kinect has already been hacked by various people, we've seen it run on OSX, make friends with the iPad as well as a few other things. Either way, hacks or not, we totally think the tech opens up some cool possibilities.

Links:

Extending Standard Gestures

Gestures Beyond Skeletal

Gesture Shortcuts

Gesture Tool

Gesture Coach