How Long Until Kinect Turns Into Skynet?

Why play games on Kinect when you can hook it up to a robot, teach it how to learn from its surroundings then take your orders with the wave of an arm?

Philipp Robbel, a student at MIT’s Personal Robotics Group, has done just that, connecting Microsoft’s motion-sensing peripheral to a small robot (a hacked Roomba, no less!), with amazing results.

Not only can the small robot wheel itself around the room, mapping out its surroundings in 3D, it can also be controlled by a human via gesture controls, since it’s able to first recognise a person against the background of a room, then interpret your commands.

[YouTube via Singularity Hub]