The Kinect Sensor Reaches Consumers

Microsoft released Kinect for the Xbox 360 in November 2010. The accessory let players control games using body movement rather than a handheld controller and quickly became one of the most widely distributed depth-sensing devices of its era.

The original Kinect combined an RGB camera, infrared projector, infrared depth camera, and microphones. The structured-light system projected an infrared pattern into the room and estimated depth by measuring how that pattern appeared to deform across surfaces. Software then converted the depth map into a moving skeleton model of the player.

Researchers and hobbyists quickly began using Kinect outside gaming for robotics, 3D scanning, motion capture, and computer vision. Cheap depth sensing had previously required specialized equipment; Kinect put it into a consumer device and helped accelerate experimentation with spatial computing.