Our brains don’t just ”know everything” as we need to gather ”historical data” so we can predict and assess - the same applies to Kinect’s noggin.
”The Kinect brain works in the same way as your brain, or my brain. Our brains are machines designed to essentially be this massive blob of signal to noise. We push away the noise and very quickly focus in on the signal,” said Kinect creator Alex Kipman.
”Imagine we have a fictitious baby,” he continued. ”She or he is zero years old, you show this baby a human and a lion, and you say, ‘Here baby, tell the difference between them.’ Turns out that a brand new baby cannot.”
”Time goes by and now this baby has enough reference data, historical data, to be able to predict, next time you show it, the difference between the two.”
”Our world works in the same way. Your brain doesn’t just know everything that it sees. As you walk through the world, it’s using previous historical data to essentially predict, based on probabilities, what you’re seeing now,” explained Kipman.
This whole ‘learning process’ uses a single percent of the Xbox 360’s CPU and GPU, and it should theoretically reduce lag even more than previously thought.
”There’s a reason that these kinds of science fiction turned science fact technologies haven’t been available before,” said Kipman. ”And this is where I’ll tell you, ‘Hey, there’s been a breakthrough.’ Quite a significant number of them.”
Kinect launches in the US tomorrow (November 4th) and on the 10th in Europe.
