Xbox Kinect Can Be Used to Collect Crime Scene Data, Help Police… Kinect the Dots

No stone has been left unturned in the quest to find something, anything, that the Xbox Kinect is good for, and it may have paid off: The Kinect seems pretty useful for investigating real crime scenes. I can only guess that it wound up in this role after its prominent part in the case of how the PS4 murdered the Xbox One.

The Kinect itself is a pretty sophisticated piece of technology despite the fact that gamers don’t seem too interested in standing up and wildly gesticulating to play video games. In fact, it might just be a serviceable, cheap alternative to complicated crime scene scanning equipment and data collection.

Despite all of the snappy one-liners and cool shades, crime scene investigation mostly involves measuring a lot of things very tediously and recording all of that data. This can include various equipment from specialized laser measuring equipment to regular old tape measures, but some testing has shown that a Kinect’s object tracking can potentially automate a lot of that work according to research to be published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

I wonder if Microsoft will start trying to market the Kinect with this new information. “Kinect: More convenient than a tape measure,” has a nice ring to it. Either way, this new function sounds like a real… achievement. (⌐■_■)

(via Discover, image via CSI Miami)

Previously in uses for Kinect

• Microsoft was displeased to learn that British spies considered spying with Kinect
• A South Korean border monitoring system uses the Kinect
• Kinect can also rehabilitate stroke patients

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