How can I access the Kinect using Java?

Question

I am currently in a Computer Vision course and for my final project I am going to make a small game that interacts with the Kinect.

Now I want to make this game in Java

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem. I wanted to use Kinect in Java for my Computer Vision research, and I had a Mac OSX Lion like you. The solution that I found is to run a virtual copy of Windows 7 in my Mac (using VMWare or Parallels or Microsoft HyperV) and then use the open source J4K Java for Kinect library, which is a Java binding for the Kinect SDK using the Java Native Interface (JNI). Of course you can also use this open source library directly in computers that run Windows.

The J4K Java library for Kinect also has a tutorial on how to write a kinect based application in just 10 lines of Java code.

There are also several source code examples that shows you how to read depth, video, and skeleton data from the Kinect and use them in Java classes. You can also use multiple Kinects, animate avatars, and other examples. The link to the source code examples is here .

A screenshot of the open source Kinect Viewer, which is useful for Computer Vision applications like yours is below:

I hope that this information helped.