Kinect + 3D Printer = Be Your Own Souvenir

The Kinect has been used for some truly amazing things, from medicine to videoconferencing. But, surprisingly, it took until now for somebody to pair the camera good at detecting three dimensions with a printer capable of cranking out three dimensions.

But, it finally happened, and it happened in…Barcelona? For tourists?

Courtesy of blablabLAB, 3D printing has finally met its ideal input: three Kinects. The way it works is that the tourist gets on a stand and strikes a pose. The Kinects map the person in 3D space, and feed the data to a 3D printer. The printer cranks out a little figurine of you in that pose that you can take home as a souvenir.

Even better, all the software to do this, from openKinect to Blender, is open source and freely available. Basically the Lab just grabbed freely available parts and assembled them into something completely awesome and new.

This was only shown for two weekends in Barcelona, but we’re pretty sure that innovative street vendors and hackers who just like pulling neat stunts will be replicating this across the world fairly soon. Which is good, since I need a figure of myself in various poses for…uh…personal reasons.