What you need to know
- The Azure Kinect developer kit is now available in Japan, Germany, and the UK.
- The system uses depth sensors, spatial microphones, and the cloud to model environments.
- The Azure Kinect developer kit is available for $399.
Microsoft's Azure Kinect Developer Kit (Azure Kinect DK) is now available in Japan, Germany, and the UK. The Azure Kinect DK combines depth sensors and spatial microphones to model environments. It can work alongside Microsoft's Azure to add cognitive services and manage connected PCs. Microsoft shared the news of the expanded availability on Twitter.
The Azure Kinect DK is used in health and life science environments, retail outlets, manufacturing, and robotics. As an example, Ocuvera uses the kit to monitor patients. The Azure Kinect DK's depth-sensing cameras can determine if a patient is rolling over in their bed or trying to stand up. If the system recognizes that a patient is trying to get out of bed, it can help medical staff get to the room before a patient potentially falls out of bed.
The Azure Kinect DK has a 12MP RGB camera and a 1MP depth camera. It also has a 360-degree microphone array for spatial audio. As the name suggests, the Azure Kinect DK is built off Microsoft's Kinect technology from the Xbox.
The kit was already available in the U.S. and China and is now available in Japan, Germany, and the UK. You can read more about the Azure Kinect DK on Microsoft's webiste.
A kit for audio and visual modeling
Azure Kinect DK is a developer kit and PC peripheral that contains a 1MP depth camera, a 360˚ microphone array, a 12MP RGB camera, and orientation sensors for building advanced computer vision and speech models.
