Programmers, roboticists and tinkerers are getting the Kinect to do things it was not really meant to do, like create “holographic” video images that can be rotated on a computer screen (see video below).

Other creative uses of the Kinect involve drawing 3-D doodles in the air and then rotating them with a nudge of the hand, manipulating colorful animated puppets on a computer screen, and the KinectBot, which combines the Kinect and an iRobot Create, using the Kinect’s sensors to detect humans, respond to gesture and voice commands, and generate 3-D maps of what it is seeing as it rolls through a room.

Image: 3D Video Capture with Kinect (YouTube)