Japanese Researchers Develop Kinect Game System that Reacts to Tongue Movement

It’s always fun to see new Kinect hacks, particularly if they are from Japan. Some of you might recall the augmented reality breasts from Osaka-based Ningen Inc. last year as a particularly stimulating example. But now researchers at Nojima Laboratory have developed another unusual Kinect creation that uses the tongue as its interface.

The system lets the user control a simple on-screen shooting game with – of all things – their tongue! By using the Kinect’s camera, it can detect the position of the users tongue, adjusting the direction of the shooting.

While the system takes the form of a game, its purpose is actually quite serious. The goal is to provide interactive training to individuals who have limited or impaired motion with their tongue. Nojima Lab’s system is called SITA, or Simple Interface for Tongue motion Acquisition.

Like many things over the past few days, I did wonder for a second if this wasn’t a carry-over from April Fools Day (like the Assassin’s Creed Kinect prank, for example). But the SITA system is real, and looks to be a useful solution for a very specific problem.

Check out the video from Diginfo News below, which includes a demonstration.

[Via Anime News Network]