Intel RealSense 3D: The camera that feels you

April 18, 2015

Intel's new 3D technology takes facial recognition one step further.

“He was just breathing", said the Erinas the static filled the screen:

"Maybe it was the extra coffee I had drunk, or maybe it was just nerves as I was trying this game for the first time in front of its creators, but my heart was pounding. And the game knew it; by tracking my pulse with Intel's RealSense camera technology, Nevermind not only responds to my hand movements, but to my own emotions. What I'm seeing is far more interesting than the usual gesture recognition I've known until now. I take a deep breath and move on."

If you don't know what it's about, the Intel RealSense 3Dis a camera like Kinect of Microsoft, but with a shorter range and much higher resolution and is mounted on a laptop with the appropriate mount like a standard camera. Where Kinect "sees" the entire room, RealSense has a vital range of about a meter, but with much greater resolution and responsiveness within that limited space.

Developers can use the RealSense for facial recognition, motion tracking and even emotion recognition! And these are just its ready-made and default capabilities. The more resourceful can use its data for almost anything, thereby opening up possibilities that were previously in the realm of science fiction.

In a demonstration made by the Intel at an event to test games with its new technology, RealSense, while in some the similarities with Microsoft Kinect and Nintendo Wii were obvious, in others the limits of the possibilities were far exceeded, pushing the game to the limit and showing the real revolution that this technology will bring.

You just need a body

The Lego Portal Racers is a game of endless race according to the formula Temple Run or of Subway Surfers. Run on endless tracks through various Lego worlds , collecting points and prizes as long as you can stand it before you crash. Tilting your head right-left you turn and guide your character, so simple.

Madagascar: Move it! is similarly simple and accessible to children. It shows the lemur from the movie of the same name dancing with simple rhythmic movements of our hands, increasing the speed and complexity of the movements as we level up.

Η "beauty" of such a medium is that it is not aimed at "manιακούς" and "freaks"of computers or games, but they are friendly to the simple,"unrelated" world. That is why the Wii won so many people that it had nothing to do with the games. There was no need to learn how to operate strange controls or memorize complex combinations on keyboards and mice.

After all, there is no need to learn how to operate the machine because everything is done with natural movements of the hands, the head and the body in general. You just need a body. And with the RealSense, we go a step (or many) further as we completely cut out the need for an input device and replace it with ourselves.

Lasers are the future

The Laserlife is aimed at somewhat older people, but again it focuses on ease of access. You are a mysterious alien entity represented by a bunch of laser, and falls upon the corpse of an astronaut drifting in the space. Using your advanced technology, you pick up pieces of the astronaut's memory to understand who or what he or she was. Each section memory is also a level where you collect, reconfigure and return the memory to its place.

The different phases require different moves to control the game, such as grabbing glowing floating crystals or move your fingers slightly to guide the beam of the light to the laser to pass through bright gates, all in sync with the music.

Once again with feeling

Although it is difficult to achieve the feeling of fear and anxiety that a thriller produces as you stand in a hotel room for a presentation, the effect was nevertheless impressive. The designer Erin Reynolds originally designed the Nevermind as a project that would show how the Games to help people. By providing a direct response to how the body is affected by stress, players can develop methods to control it.

"If we can get people to come a little closer to themselves, I consider that a victory." said the Reynolds. Even though the game was developed to read the pulse only, the Reynolds hopes that it will be able to use all the biometric data that technology can use RealSense. One idea is a game that, as it reads our biometric data and our reactions, changes the way it responds to us and increases or decreases its difficulty.

Although it is not yet in its final form, the Nevermind is the most interesting proposal, because it exploits mechanisms that until now have been impossible to use.

Where others simply use body movements to control the game, - turning a spaceship with a wave of the hand is just a "turn".Trick" and not something revolutionary - but a game that reacts to our emotions, opening up a whole new world in the way we communicate with the "machine", something we've only seen in science fiction movies so far. And if the Wii and Kinect gave us some new possibilities, the RealSense promises a "wondrous new world“.

from Elichord