How Does It Work? Where Did It Come From?

In the next few sections of this introduction, I’ll provide some background about where the Kinect came from as well as a little info on how the device works. This issue of the Kinect’s provenance may seem like it’s only of academic interest. However, as we’ll see, it is actually central when deciding which of the many available libraries we should use to write our programs with the Kinect. It’s also a fascinating and inspiring story of what the open source community can do.

What Does the Kinect Do?

The Kinect is a depth camera. Normal cameras collect the light that bounces off of the objects in front of them. They turn this light into an image that resembles what we see with our own eyes. The Kinect, on ...

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