Kinect Could Add Force Feedback To Surgical Robots.

Popular Science (1/19) reports engineering students at the University of Washington hacked a Kinect to provide surgeons using surgical robots with a sense of touch. "Engineers and scientists have been working for years to fix the inherent lack of touch sensitivity that goes along with using surgical robots." Force feedback is widely seen as the solution to the problem. "To add force feedback, surgeons need a highly detailed, live-updating, 3-D scan of whatever is being sliced and/or diced." And while "that equipment is normally exceedingly expensive," in this case the students were able to create a working design by using the Kinect's ability to sense 3-D environments. "The Kinect has other advantages as well: They can assign 'off-limits areas,' around, say, vital organs, so the tools can't venture in and cause undue damage." The students said the Kinect's shortcomings could be easily addressed.

Popular Science Article Read MORE Turning Microsoft's $150 Kinect Into a $50,000 Piece of Surgical Equipment