Kinect Used as a Depth-Aware Camera

One day, ordinary digital cameras might be able to capture not just the image of a scene, but the depth information of that scene as well, allowing 3D representations to be built afterward. UC Davis visualization researcher Oliver Kreylos took the Microsoft Kinect webcam-style sensor and built such a camera. The video above shows him demonstrating how the scene can be viewed in three dimensions after combining the information from the device’s infrared and color cameras.