Hey, remember how awesome “Trauma Center” was on the DS? Grad students at the University of Washington did, obviously, and they’re using it to allow doctors to operate on you remotely using surgical robots.
Before you imagine surgery being outsourced to XBLA, the doctor isn’t using the Kinect as a controller. Instead, the Kinect is being used as a camera to create a three-dimensional map for better force-feedback. One of the big problems with remote surgery is that robots have no sense of touch, and the doctor needs those subtle details in order to cut you up properly. The Kinect offers a dirt-cheap and very safe method of getting the data needed.
Good thing too, considering all those people breaking their bones thanks to gaming with the Kinect too hard.
[ via the surgeons at Kotaku ]