Kinect

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What Does Kinect Mean?

Kinect is an add-on device offered by Microsoft as a controller for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Xbox One gaming systems. Kinect enables the users to control games, movies and music with the use of body gestures or speech commands, eliminating the need for standard controllers.

Techopedia Explains Kinect

The word “Kinect” is a portmanteau of “kinetics” and “connect.” It uses video and audio data collected by its camera and microphone as input to the Xbox. Kinect is a controller that is able to control the game system by distinguishing a user’s gestures, voice commands, facial characteristics, skeletal data and full body motions. Gaming applications are able to recognize individual players with the help of skeletal data and identify each player by name and other features.

In addition to its use with Xbox, Kinect is also being used in research in fields such as IT health, education, home automation and in health technology with helping patients in doing chores.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.