Kinect enables robot to become aware of its surroundings -- oh, and detect humans

Robots are adorable. And sometimes, you just want to gift them the ability to see and learn more about their human creators. That's exactly what MIT's Philipp Robbel has done with a hacked Kinect sensor and an iRobot Create Robot.

Using Kinect, the robot is able to analyze a real-time 3D reconstruction of the environment. In this video, you'll see the robot able to move around its environment freely. Best of all, Kinect allows the robot to detect people and extract "human depth data." Ideally, this will let you command robots "using natural gestures," such as: move left, move right, kill.