NPR Kinect Story Features Mark Bolas and Belinda Lange’s Jewel Mine Game

A story on NPR’s All Things Considered covered the many ways researchers and others are modifying the Microsoft Kinect. For the story reporter Alex Schmidt spoke to Mark Bolas, ICT’s associate director for mixed reality and an associate professor in the Interactive Media Division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, about the trend.
“I remember getting this wrench with my father when I was 13 or 14 years old,” said Bolas. “And then with it, I could start working on my bicycle. And I got into motorcycles and all these things that I could build. The wrenches of today aren’t physical. They’re the software wrenches.”
Schmidt also visited a USC rehabilitation research clinic with Belinda Lange who leads the motor rehab group in ICT’s Medical Virtual Reality Lab. In the story Lange takes a patient through Jewel Mine, the Kinect-based motor rehab tool she developed, which gets a postive review from patient Stacey Holmes.
“It causes you to try things at a pace and a precision that you wouldn’t otherwise try to do,” he said.
Listen to the story here.
Read the transcript here.