Microsoft to (involuntarily) enter Medical Industry

Article link:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376070,00.asp

By: Roddy Chung

Summary and effect on business:

Motion capture technology has been around for years, but only in recent years has the technology become advanced enough in both software and hardware to be mass-produced for a larger audience. When technologies start adapting to the video gamer demographic, however, the video gamer demographic has had a tendency of adapting the technology back into the rest of the world.
 
          One such example is seen with a University of Washington student fiddling with his Xbox Kinect, the most recent gaming perhenphial addon that adapts video/motion sensing as a means of user interfacing.
 
 
          A recent story is how precise robotics controls were adapted (though 'hacked' seems the more accurate term) to to the Microsoft Xbox Kinect system. Consisting primarily as a two-sensor camera that plugs into the Xbox and uses the gaming console as a platform, users can use their movement on camera to interact with video games. It is not a new technology, as motion sensor technology has been adapted into the video game field for years now, the most recent additions being the Playstation Move system and the Nintendo Wii's basic control hardware.
 
          The technology is being explored and researched upon by the University of Washington as a control interface for surgical robotics, after a graduate student began tinkering with his own Xbox and began brainstorming on the possibilities of the technology. This isn't the only story of its kind, however - the Kinect has been explored for other possibilities in the medical field, such as a touchless user interface for surgeons in the operating theatre as well as virtual reality surgeries for training.
 
          Microsoft, though notoriously protective of their IP, have in recent years faced stiff competition from open-source development (notably in the form of the Linux operating system), and has since seen the benefit of web community contribution. Microsoft-based hardware and software have had new ideas and open-source applications added to the roster because of it, and as a result, pet projects like this have been possible.
 
          While tech magazines and websites have been focusing on the medical usages of the Kinect in the last five months, it's not a long shot to see other uses be developed from gaming hardware.