Understanding skeletal mapping

At present, Microsoft Kinect can identify up to six people within the view of the field, but it can only track at most two people in detail at the same time.

The players must stand (or sit) in front of the Kinect device, facing the sensors. If the player shows only a part of his body to the sensors, or wants the sensors to recognize sideways poses, the result may not be accurate, as some part of the skeleton may be in the wrong place, or may jitter back and forth.

Usually, the player is suggested to stand between 0.8 m and 4.0 m away from the device. Kinect for Windows may perform better for near distances because it has a near depth range mode (0.4 m) for use.

In every frame, Kinect will calculate a skeleton image for each person in tracking, which includes 20 joints to represent a complete human body. The positions and meanings of these joints can be found in the following figure:

The skeleton mapping

Note

Kinect uses infrared lights to calculate the depth of...