Philipp Robbel, a student at MIT's Personal Robotics Group, has used a hacked Xbox Kinect camera and an iRobot Create kit to make a Roomba-esque KinectBot that can recognize human beings and respond to their gestural commands.

In an interview with SingularityHub, Robbel discussed how KinectBot grew out of his research in robots that could locate trapped or missing people in a disaster. The Kinect's ability to map terrain in 3-D and to recognize and respond to human gestures could eventually be teamed up with aerial drones and rapid-response teams to launch rescue operations.

This video shows how KinectBot was assembled and what it can do.

Bear in mind, this is just what Robbel calls a "weekend hacking project." Imagine what Microsoft's Robotics team – who've had a lot longer to play with the tech behind Kinect than the rest of us – might be cooking up in their labs.

Still a $150 off-the-shelf sensor like Kinect opens up the option box for everybody. Add the right mix of boops and beeps, a computer-hacking interface, jet packs and the ability to serve drinks and fix starships, and we're just a few iterations away from a full-fledged R2-D2 unit. We're living in the future.

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