They used the data points to replicate a rudimentary version of the gesture interfaces seen in Minority Report – sans gloves, of course.The guys used something called the Point Cloud Library from Willow Garage’s open source robotic control package ROS.

Here’s a video of the hack in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

One can only hope that some games start to surface that take advantage of individual finger movements. I could see this coming in handy for puzzle games, and maybe something like the part of Bioshock where you hack into the security system – this would be a much cooler way to test your dexterity. Also, for virtual porn.

If you’re interested in giving this a shot for yourself, you’ll need to grab the ROS Kinect code here, and MIT’s code here. I’m not sure exactly what else you need to do to make it all work though, so install at your own risk.

If Tom Cruise only was driving in his Lexus 2054, maybe he’d catch up.