LWF11 Prof Andrew Blake – MD: Microsoft Research Cambridge – NUI
Talk about NUI – Natural User Interfaces (no touch).
Obvious plug for Kinect. Showed Anybot robot that allows you to attend a meeting without actually being there. Talked through other examples of such tech.
Challenges of creating Kinect: Have to be able to capture body pose. Come in many shapes, sizes and flexibilities! Depth camera made all this possible. Prof Blake spent quite some time doing the Professor thing by going into the science of Kinect.
Similar tech that developed from Autism work is now allowing computers to detect emotion in faces.
Big final plug for Computer Science. Is changing the World. Seriously concerned about the decline in uptake in schools. NOT the same as ICT. Computer Science is about providing the computing and is an exciting intellectual challenge.
Final point is salient from this morning’s last few talks and a good call to arms on what was otherwise a bit too geeky a presentation for my liking!