We’ve seen a lot of hacks that take advantage of the Kinect’s motion sensing and depth camera technology. One feature from this nifty little device from Microsoft that seems to get overlooked is that it also has capability for voice recognition. We’ve seen this feature get a little more prominence in the latest games released such as Mass Effect 3 (Which was awesome, by the way) but not so much in the projects from the hacking community.
Today’s featured hack is one that takes advantage of it. It’s called the Amulet Voice Kinect and it’s supposed to work as a media center controller of sorts. According to the developers, their application deals with some of the issues most Kinect users encounter when they try to use the device while sitting down or when the music or game volume is too loud. Instead of using the built-in skeletal recognizers, they use HaarClassifiers:
“Not relying on the built-in skeletal recogniser but using HaarClassifiers instead means you can gesture while lying on the floor
and dipping the volume to any playing music while your speaking is the secret to getting a really reliable speech recognition experience.”
You can read more about the technology on their project website. There’s also a free download link there so you can test out the application for yourself.
