DepthJS is a simple idea. A browser extension for Chrome and Safari that lets you talk to Kinect using JavaScript.

What this means is that you can write Kinect using gadgets that work from any web page. At the moment the software is pre-alpha and provides a low level interface to the Kinect and a high level gesture recognition API.

The high-level API provides robust hand detection but needs work on more general gesture recognition.The API can recognize the following:

• Presence of hand (registration)
• Removal of hand (unregistration)
• Hand movement
• Large swipe up/down/left/right

The architecture of the system is modular and uses the open source libfreenect drivers and OpenCV in C++. A native browser plug in wraps the Kinect code and provides the JavaScript plugin. The ability of Chrome to accept native code make it the browser of choice for this sort of approach but it can be made to work with others, e.g. Safari, but with additional work. It is only supported on Macs, although it should work under Linux.

If you want to see the sort of thing it might be used for take a look at the video below.:

In my opinion it looks good but I foresee lots of arm ache and perhaps even some ailment to beat carpal tunnel syndrome as the number one computer using hazard.

More information

DepthJS website

Source Code

Further Reading

All About Kinect

Getting Started with PC Kinect