Motion Detection Using Kinect Device for Controling Robotic Arm

With the advance in video technology, motion-based computing system has an effect on both hardware and software. Kinect is a webcam style add-on peripheral for Xbox 360 game console manufactured by Microsoft, which is featured by RGB camera and multi-array microphone. Kinect is a motion-based software technology that can provide 3-D motion detection, skeleton motion tracking and voice and facial recognition. In this paper, we built up a mechanism to use human body to control robotic arm through Kinect Device using the Kinect SDK for Windows library. First, we build a C# program to track the human motion by getting the stereo skeleton joints from the stream of the Kinect. After that, we build methods to measure the distance between two joints of the skeleton, and then generate commands. Second, we build an Action Script program with Adobe Flash that will receive the command message and perform the command. Third, two projects are connected through TCP Socket Protocol by running the C# project in the server side, while the Robotic Arm project is implemented as a client. Through socket communication, either virtual or real robotic arm can be manipulated by the commands.