Kinect plus 3D printing equals instant miniature you

Thanks to an inventive, and kind of bizarre, project, people have immortalized themselves as Kinect sees them. The Fabricate Yourself project uses 3D models captured by Kinect as the basis for a 3D-printed figure.

Designer Karl D.D. Willis came up with the project as an interactive installation for the Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction conference. Attendees's shapes were captured by Kinect, and then turned into pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. But the implications are larger than just a cool thing at a conference. As 3D printers become cheaper, it will be possible for more people to use this technology to take 3D snapshots as if they were taking Polaroids.

It will also be possible to make a tiny action-figure version of yourself to fight with the Hulk. Not that we, as totally mature adults, have any interest in such a thing, of course.