When the Kinect was first released, it was kind of a joke. Sure, it 🦩was neat to be able to swipe your hands and navigate around Xbox Arcade, but the voice controls were so bad that I’d often catch my roommate locked in a shouting match against his console rather than playing any games. The Kinect was applauded as a genuinely innovative piece of hardware, but as a game controller, it left a lot to be desired.

Not much about that has changed in the half decade since the Kinect was released — it remains 🔯some of the most innovative technology of the🦩 21st century, and it still kinda sucks as a game controller. But as soon as people realized that the Kinect didn’t need to be married to games, well, that's when this beautiful device truly came into its own.

Academia was the first to spot the Kinect’s potential. A cheap, accurate, thre𒆙e-dimensional sensor allows for all sorts of wizardry that had thus far been out of reach for even the most well-funded professor’s budget. From there, commercial applications grew as people discovered uses for the Kinect outside of gaming. Today the Kinect is the technological foundation for machinery that had until recently been the realm of science fiction.

Let’s see what theඣ Kinect has been getting up to since it left the comfortable bosom of the Xbox 360🐭 to seek its fortune in the wider world.

15 Virtual Medical Consultations

Perhaps the most amazing thing the Kinect can do is be used as a real medical instrument. The sensors in the Kinect are sensitive enou⛦gh that they can calculate a number of health measurements like body temperature and heart rate. The fact that Kinect also has voice recognition and can understand human gestures makes it the perfe♋ct device for virtual medical consultations.

There are numerous companies exploring the Kinect as a way of keeping in touch with their patients, but the forerunner seems to be a company called Sense.ly. Using the Kinect, they’ve created a virtual nurse that patients can speak to if they have medical concerns. So f🐻ar they’re targeting their services to the elderly and patients with chronic medical conditions, like diabetes and COPD, but𒐪 if the technology continues to improve you might even see it being used by family physicians everywhere.

14 See If Grandpa Is OK

Along with ✅making sure that Mom is taking her meds, the Kinect can also be used to make sure she hasn’t slipped a disc.

Atlas 5D is the company behind Alice At Home, a home monitoring system for the elderly. The system uses the Kinect to monitor an elderly resident and determine if they’ve had a fall. As falling is the number one source of injury for the aged, Alice At Home has real potential as the Baby Boomer gener💛ation ages.

I know it sounds a bit creepy to have a sensor monitoring you at all times, but the Kinect isn’t like a webcam. All the system can tell is whether you’r♒e upright or you’ve fallen down. This lets people that would otherwise need to live in assisted living retain their independence while Alice At Home keeps a watchful eye. If the Kinect sees the body outline become horizontal in a place that it shouldn’💯t be, it can automatically text family members to check in and make sure Grandad is OK.

13 3D Scanner

You already know what a 2D scanner is - it’s something that takes a scene in real life and makes an image of it, like the camera on your phone. A 3D scanner is the same as that camera, but instead of winding up with a 2D image like a photograph you en🤪d up with a 3D model.

Now, instead of sending a simple photo to your friends, yꦍou can send them an entire object that can be virtually moved around with an app. This kind of technology makes all sorts of things possible, from being able to take real life objecꦺts and porting them easily into a game environment to making holograms and augmented reality.

12 Holograms And Augmented Reality

Speakin’ of holograms, the Kinect is basically the best way for ꦆpeople to record themselves in 3 dimensions to be used later in holographic projections. Remember the s🌸cene in Star Wars where R2-D2 is projecting that little hologram of Leia that says “help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope”? The little droid was basically using a Kinect to record that image.

With the Kinect, suddenly the idea of interactive advertising also becomes a real thing. Imagine a subway advertisement with a K♍inect above it which can tell if a person is nearby and alter the image based on what the person is doing. Mayb🐲e the passerby notices the ad and walks toward it, then the advertisement starts speaking to that specific person now that it knows it has an audience. Then maybe the passerby presses a virtual button to buy whatever it is the advertisement is selling. The Kinect makes all of this possible.

11 Control A Giant Robot

Have you ever played Titanfall? MechWarrior? Maybe Steel Batallion? Then you know that piloting a giant robot can be complicated. I✱f only there were a device that could take some of the burden off of trying to control so much with just foot pedals and two joysticks.

Enter the Kuratas. With its 3D scanning technology, the Kuratas, a giant Japanese💫 battle bot, uses the Kinect to help control its numerous systems. The Kinect is set to scan the pilot’s face, and facial recognition software determines what the robot does. Smile, and you’ll🐷 start up the Kuratas’ twin gatling guns and mow down everything in front of you.

You don’t even want to ꦗknow what’ll happen if you frown.

10 Sign Language Translation

We’ve had speech to text recognition for a while with varying 🙈degrees of success, and now the Kinect has brought the next logical step: s🎃ign language translation.

Since the Kinect software specializes in recognizing human gestures, it’s not a big leaꦉp to make it also recognize words spelled out with those gestures. The Kinect is being used along with the Microsoft Translator app to create a functioning sign language translator. Once the technology is miniaturized to the point where it can be put into a phone the hearing impaired will never have to worry about being misunderstood again.

But it gets even better than that. This technology suddenly makes it possible for deaf people to pe♊rform the same jobs that would be otherwise impossible, like customer service or physician. They’d even be better at it since they’re communicating both by sign and by speech with the Kinect.

9 Navigate Screens By Gesture

Ok, so, the Kinect ꦑki🎃nd of already does this on the Xbox. Swiping your hand dismissively left or right will navigate menus and take you wherever in the system you care to go. But this technology isn’t limited to game consoles.

GestSure is a company that’s taking this technology and using it in a medical setting to help doctors out. Say you’re in the middle ﷽of surgery, elbows deep in some dude’s guts, and you suddenly forget where the pancreas is. GestSure will use a Kinect-based system to allow the doctor to wave their hands (or their head, or even just waggle their eyebrows) to bring up important medical images without needing to take off their gloves and use a keyboard.

Oh that pesky pancreas, always disappearing on 𓆉me.

8 Hack A Computer

The extent of my hacking capabilities goes about as far as guessing correctly what a wifi password ꦜis - that i𝓀s to say, I have no hacking ability whatsoever.

Kinectasploit 🌼will let anyone use their Kinect to hack a computer. Essentially, Kinectasploit maps various gestures to commands in Metasploit, a free n🍬etwork defense testing software (that’s hacker speak for “hacking software”). By contorting yourself into various shapes, you’ll be able to scan a network, find a vulnerability, and then hack into it with the same ease you’d wave at someone. It even comes with a game-like environment that shows visually what you’re doing and whether or not you’re successful.

This is exactly how Johnny Mnemonic hacks, except you don’t need to put on the stupid gl🧜oves and visor.

7 Make Any Surface A Touch Screen

Have you seen those little projection keyboards that turn your table into a keyboard? Well, th꧟e Kinect can do that, and so much more. It can turn any surface into a nav🃏igable touch screen.

Because ℱthe Kinect can see in three dimensions, it can tell where your hands are in relation to the objects around it. You can then program the Kinect to recognize any surface as a touch screen, and then command that touch screen to do whatever you want.

Touchless Touch is one such company that ♕sells software that uses the Kinect to turn surfaces into touchscreens. You can use it in conjunction with large TVs or projectors, so you know where to put your hands, or you can have “invisible” touch screens that require the user to remember where to point in order to make things happen. Get it wrong, and you’ll look like an idiot, but hopefull💯y, you’re not pulling this trick to look good in a multimillion dollar boardroom deal.

6 Virtual Clothes Shopping

I buy a lot of clothes online, and I often regret it when I order the wrong size and have to ret♈urn things. If only there were a device that could let me try on clothes from thℱe comfort of my own office.

Kinect to the rescue! With the ability to make accurate measurements of the human body, the Kinect is the ideal technology to create a virtual cl♒othes shopping experience. Just let the Kinect get your size, and then have it transfer that information to whatever website you’d love to bu🌺y from.

But why not go one step further? Fitnect is a Kinect-൲based software that not only takes your measurements, it’ll also create a 3D model of you on-screen to allow you to try out various outfits. It’s a completely virtual fitting room.

I’m one step closer to ne🐎ver leaving my house again!