en UW Students Hack Kinect to enable robotic surgery <div class="field field-type-emvideo field-field-embedded-video"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div id="emvideo-youtube-flash-wrapper-1"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="250" width="444" data=";rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;playerapiid=ytplayer&amp;fs=1" id="emvideo-youtube-flash-1"> <param name="movie" value=";rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;playerapiid=ytplayer&amp;fs=1" /> <param name="allowScriptAcess" value="sameDomain"/> <param name="quality" value="best"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"/> <param name="scale" value="noScale"/> <param name="salign" value="TL"/> <param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> </object></div><div class="video-description"></div> </div> </div> </div> <P>&nbsp;</p> <P>Fredrik Ryden is a graduate student from Sweden working with University of Washington Electrical Engineering Professors.&nbsp; His goal, to one day make surgeries safer for doctors by using virtual environments.&nbsp; "The problem with surgical robotics today is that the surgeon can see what he's doing but he can't feel what he's doing," Ryden says.</p> <P>Ryden recently took up a challenge from his professors: to hack into Microsoft's Kinect and reprogram it to add sensory feedback.&nbsp; A process that can take some hackers up to two months to complete.&nbsp; Fredrik did it in slightly less time.&nbsp; "I bought it on Friday and it was finished on Monday."</p> <P>Right now the UW team is exploring Kinect's potential to improve robotic surgeries by creatine off-limit aeras that would protect vital organs around the body.&nbsp; But the most exciting part for the team?&nbsp; The Kinect is relatively cheap and mass produced, meaning that this technology which previously cost tens of thousands of dollars could potentially be made much much cheaper in the future.</p><div class="field field-type-datestamp field-field-pub-date"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <span class="date-display-single">Wednesday, 2011, January 19 - 15:57</span> </div> </div> </div> Technology Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:49:02 +0000 Daniel Strothman 616886 at