Little robot uses Kinect sensor as its eyes

One MIT student has created a little robot that uses Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor to see, with its cameras serving as robot eyeballs. Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect an iRobot Create to create a little guy that can accurately map its surroundings and also respond to human gestures. The robot actually “sees” its surroundings and can send them wirelessly to a computer. You’ll see in the above video how quickly the mapping is laid out.

Robbel has also incorporated the ability to use gestures to control this robot. One hand swipe to the left and the robot moves left. The creator imagines this type of robot being useful in disaster relief.

A Singularity Hub article jokes that this tech could be used to improve Roomba. Someone should get on that. Being able to point to spilled Cocca Puffs and have Roomba pick it up would be fantastic.