The Azure Kinect DK is a developer kit and PC peripheral which employs the use of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

sensors for

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

and speech models, and is connected to the

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

. It is the successor to the

Microsoft Kinect Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of fli ...

line of sensors. The kit includes a 12 megapixel RGB camera supplemented by 1 megapixel-

depth camera Range imaging is the name for a collection of techniques that are used to produce a 2D image showing the distance to points in a scene from a specific point, normally associated with some type of sensor device. The resulting range image has pix ...

for body tracking, a 360-degree seven-microphone array and an orientation sensor. The sensor is based on the depth sensor presented during 2018

ISSCC International Solid-State Circuits Conference is a global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The conference is held every year in February at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in downtown San Fra ...

. While the previous iterations of Microsoft's Kinect primarily focused on gaming, this device is targeted towards other markets such as

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

, and

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

. With the kit, developers can create applications connected to Microsoft's cloud and AI technologies. The Azure Kinect is used in volumetric capture workflows through the use of software tools that can connect many Azure Kinects into one volumetric capture rig, allowing users to create interactive virtual reality experiences with human performances. The Azure Kinect was announced on February 24, 2019 in Barcelona at the MWC. It was released in the US in March 2020, and in the UK, Germany, and Japan in April 2020.

References

External links

* {{Microsoft Azure Services Platform Microsoft video game hardware Microsoft cloud services