A start-up called Chaotic Moon Labs has hooked up various bits of hardware to produce a motorized skateboard that’s controlled through the Xbox Kinect interface.
Its ‘Board of Awesomeness’ is powered by a Samsung prototype tablet and can reach speeds up to 32 mph.
“The labs team has clearly demonstrated that, with the Board of Awesomeness, we can transform an interface previously confined to your living room and make it fun and useful for transportation in the outside world,” says Ben Lamm, CEO of Chaotic Moon Studios.
The skateboard uses video recognition, speech recognition, gesture recognition, localization data, accelerometer data, and other input to determine what the user wants to do and respond to commands.
“But this project shows that a computing environment can provide additional information and controls on the move as well as a completely different take on user experience.”
The top of the board features a Windows 8 tablet touch screen, used to turn the board on and off, manage speed settings – slow, medium and fast – and visually monitor the rider’s gestures.
To get started, the user raises his or her hands to signal the Kinect device and waits for the red dots to appear. Pushing the hands forward speeds the board up, while pulling them back slows it down or stops it.
The only downside of the board is the people who have produced it, who quite frankly are calling out for a good slap. They describe themselves as “the most talented thinkers, designers, coders, and developers in the mobile media industry today,” and say they’re “award winners, Open Source thought leaders, iPhoneDevCamp founders, and even doctors”.
“Our team has practiced [sic] their [sic] craft alongside some of the most innovative companies in the world,” they add; no sub-editors alongside the doctors, then.
Check out the board in action, below.
