Kinect

Kinect

Kinect for Xbox One
Developer	Microsoft
Type	Motion controller
Generation	Seventh and eighth
Release date	Xbox 360 NA: November 4, 2010[2] EU: November 10, 2010[1] COL: November 14, 2010[3] AU: November 18, 2010[4] JP: November 20, 2010[5] Windows WW: February 1, 2012[6] Xbox One WW: November 22, 2013[citation needed]
Lifespan	2010–2017
Discontinued	Windows WW: April 2, 2015[7] Xbox 360 WW: April 20, 2016[8] Xbox One WW: October 25, 2017[9]
Units sold	35 million (as of October 25, 2017)[10]
Camera	640×480 pixels @ 30 Hz (RGB camera) 640×480 pixels @ 30 Hz (IR depth-finding camera)[11]
Connectivity	USB 2.0 (type-A for original model; proprietary for Xbox 360 S)
Platform	Xbox 360 Xbox One Windows (Windows 7 onwards)
Best-selling game	Kinect Adventures
Predecessor	Xbox Live Vision
Successor	Azure Kinect

Kinect is a discontinued line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flight calculations, which can in turn be used to perform real-time gesture recognition and body skeletal detection, among other capabilities. They also contain microphones that can be used for speech recognition and voice control.

Kinect was originally developed as a motion controller peripheral for Xbox video game consoles, distinguished from competitors (such as Nintendo's Wii Remote and Sony's PlayStation Move) by not requiring physical controllers. The first-generation Kinect was based on technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, and unveiled at E3 2009 as a peripheral for Xbox 360 codenamed "Project Natal". It was first released on November 4, 2010, and would go on to sell eight million units in its first 60 days of availability. The majority of the games developed for Kinect were casual, family-oriented titles, which helped to attract new audiences to Xbox 360, but did not result in wide adoption by the console's existing, overall userbase.

As part of the 2013 unveiling of Xbox 360's successor, Xbox One, Microsoft unveiled a second-generation version of Kinect with improved tracking capabilities. Microsoft also announced that Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision. However, Microsoft still bundled the new Kinect with Xbox One consoles upon their launch in November 2013. A market for Kinect-based games still did not emerge after the Xbox One's launch; Microsoft would later offer Xbox One hardware bundles without Kinect included, and later revisions of the console removed the dedicated ports used to connect it (requiring a powered USB adapter instead). Microsoft ended production of Kinect for Xbox One in October 2017.

Kinect has also been used as part of non-game applications in academic and commercial environments, as it was cheaper and more robust than other depth-sensing technologies at the time. While Microsoft initially objected to such applications, it later released software development kits (SDKs) for the development of Microsoft Windows applications that use Kinect. In 2020, Microsoft released Azure Kinect as a continuation of the technology integrated with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Part of the Kinect technology was also used within Microsoft's HoloLens project. Microsoft discontinued the Azure Kinect developer kits in October 2023.^[12][13]

The origins of the Kinect started around 2005, at a point where technology vendors were starting to develop depth-sensing cameras. Microsoft had been interested in a 3D camera for the Xbox line earlier but because the technology had not been refined, had placed it in the "Boneyard", a collection of possible technology they could not immediately work on.^[14]

In 2005, Israeli company PrimeSense was founded by mathematicians and engineers to develop the "next big thing" for video games, incorporating cameras that were capable of mapping a human body in front of them and sensing hand motions. They showed off their system at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft's Alex Kipman, the general manager of hardware incubation, saw the potential in PrimeSense's technology for the Xbox system. Microsoft began discussions with PrimeSense about what would need to be done to make their product more consumer-friendly: not only improvements in the capabilities of depth-sensing cameras, but a reduction in size and cost, and a means to manufacturer the units at scale was required. PrimeSense spent the next few years working at these improvements.^[14]

Nintendo released the Wii in November 2006. The Wii's central feature was the Wii Remote, a handheld device that was detected by the Wii through a motion sensor bar mounted onto a television screen to enable motion controlled games. Microsoft felt pressure from the Wii, and began looking into depth-sensing in more detail with PrimeSense's hardware, but could not get to the level of motion tracking they desired. While they could determine hand gestures, and sense the general shape of a body, they could not do skeletal tracking. A separate path within Microsoft looked to create an equivalent of the Wii Remote, considering that this type of unit may become standardized similar to how two-thumbstick controllers became a standard feature.^[14] However, it was still ultimately Microsoft's goal to remove any device between the player and the Xbox.^[14]

Kudo Tsunoda and Darren Bennett joined Microsoft in 2008, and began working with Kipman on a new approach to depth-sensing aided by machine learning to improve skeletal tracking. They internally demonstrated this and established where they believed the technology could be in a few years, which led to the strong interest to fund further development of the technology; this has also occurred at a time that Microsoft executives wanted to abandon the Wii-like motion tracking approach, and favored the depth-sensing solution to present a product that went beyond the Wii's capabilities. The project was greenlit by late 2008 with work started in 2009.^[14]

The project was codenamed "Project Natal" after the Brazilian city Natal, Kipman's birthplace. Additionally, Kipman recognized the Latin origins of the word "natal" to mean "to be born", reflecting the new types of audiences they hoped to draw with the technology.^[15] Much of the initial work was related to ethnographic research to see how video game players' home environments were laid out, lit, and how those with Wiis used the system to plan how Kinect units would be used. The Microsoft team discovered from this research that the up-and-down angle of the depth-sensing camera would either need to be adjusted manually, or would require an expensive motor to move automatically. Upper management at Microsoft opted to include the motor despite the increased cost to avoid breaking game immersion. Kinect project work also involved packaging the system for mass production and optimizing its performance. Hardware development took around 22 months.^[14]

During hardware development, Microsoft engaged with software developers to use Kinect. Microsoft wanted to make games that would be playable by families since Kinect could sense multiple bodies in front of it. One of the first internal titles developed for the device was the pack-in game Kinect Adventures developed by Good Science Studio that was part of Microsoft Studios. One of the game modes of Kinect Adventures was "Reflex Ridge", based on the Japanese Brain Wall game where players attempt to contort their bodies in a short time to match cutouts of a wall moving at them. This type of game was a key example of the type of interactivity they wanted with Kinect, and its development helped feed into the hardware improvements.^[14] Another development was Project Milo, a prototype game developed by Lionhead Studios led by Peter Molyneux where the player could interact with a virtual avatar through motion controls and voice recognition. Lionhead had developed the project based on original capabilities of the Kinect, but according to Molyneux, Microsoft had found that a consumer-grade version of the Kinect would cost thousands of dollars, so they scaled back the device and refocused the role of games for the Kinect to be more casual games as seen on the Wii. As a result, Project Milo no longer fit Microsoft's portfolio and was cancelled.^[16]

Nearing the planned release, there was a problem of widespread testing of Kinect in various room types and different bodies accounting for age, gender, and race among other factors, while keeping the details of the unit confidential. Microsoft engaged in a company-wide program offering employees to take home Kinect units to test them. Microsoft also brought other non-gaming divisions, including its Microsoft Research, Microsoft Windows, and Bing teams to help complete the system. Microsoft established its own large-scale manufacturing facility to bulk product Kinect units and test them.^[14]

Kinect was first announced to the public as "Project Natal" on June 1, 2009, during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2009; film director Steven Spielberg joined Microsoft's Don Mattrick to introduce the technology and its potential.^[14][17] Three demos were presented during the conference—Microsoft's Ricochet and Paint Party, and Lionhead Studios' Milo & Kate created by Peter Molyneux—while a Project Natal-enabled version of Criterion Games' Burnout Paradise was shown during the E3 exhibition.^[18][19] By E3 2009, the skeletal mapping technology was capable of simultaneously tracking four people,^{[20][21][22][23]} with a feature extraction of 48 skeletal points on a human body at 30 Hz.^[23][24] Microsoft had not committed to a release date for Project Natal at E3 2009, but affirmed it would be after 2009, and likely in 2010 to stay competitive with the Wii and the PlayStation Move (Sony Interactive Entertainment's own motion-sensing system using hand-held devices).^[25]

In the months following E3 2009, rumors that a new Xbox 360 console associated with Project Natal emerged, either a retail configuration that incorporated the peripheral,^[26][27] or as a hardware revision or upgrade to support the peripheral.^[28][29] Microsoft dismissed the reports in public and repeatedly emphasized that Project Natal would be fully compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft indicated that the company considered Project Natal to be a significant initiative, as fundamental to Xbox brand as Xbox Live,^[25] and with a planned launch akin to that of a new Xbox console platform.^[30] Microsoft's vice president Shane Kim said the company did not expect Project Natal would extend the anticipated lifetime of the Xbox 360, which had been planned to last ten years through 2015, nor delay the launch of the successor to the Xbox 360.^[21][31]

Following the E3 2009 show and through 2010, the Project Natal team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability. Among these games were Beautiful Katamari and Space Invaders Extreme, which were demonstrated at Tokyo Game Show in September 2009.^[32] According to Tsunoda, adding Project Natal-based control to pre-existing games involved significant code alterations, and made it unlikely that existing games could be patched through software updates to support the unit.^[33] Microsoft also expanded its draw to third-party developers to encourage them to develop Project Natal games. Companies like Harmonix and Double Fine quickly took to Project Natal and saw the potential in it, and committed to developing games for the unit, such as the launch title Dance Central from Harmonix.^[14]

Although its sensor unit was originally planned to contain a microprocessor that would perform operations such as the system's skeletal mapping, Microsoft reported in January 2010 that the sensor would no longer feature a dedicated processor. Instead, processing would be handled by one of the processor cores of Xbox 360's Xenon CPU.^[34] Around this time, Kipmen estimated that the Kinect would only take about 10 to 15% of the Xbox 360's processing power.^[35] While this was a small fraction of the Xbox 360's capabilities, industry observers believed this further pointed to difficulties in adapting pre-existing games to use Kinect, as the motion-tracking would add to a game's high computational load and exceed the Xbox 360's capabilities. These observers believed that instead the industry would develop games specific to the Kinect features.^[34]

During Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference, it was announced that Project Natal would be officially branded as Kinect, and be released in North America on November 4, 2010.^[36] Xbox Live director Stephen Toulouse stated that the name was a portmanteau of the words "kinetic" and "connection", key aspects of the Kinect initiative.^[37][38] Microsoft and third-party studios exhibited Kinect-compatible games during the E3 exhibition.^[39] A new slim revision of the Xbox 360 was also unveiled to coincide with Kinect's launch, which added a dedicated port for attaching the peripheral;^[40] Kinect would be sold at launch as a standalone accessory for existing Xbox 360 owners, and as part of bundles with the new slim Xbox 360. All units included Kinect Adventures as a pack-in game.^[41][42]

Microsoft continued to refine the Kinect technology in the months leading to the Kinect launch in November 2010. By launch, Kipman reported they had been able to reduce the Kinect's use of the Xbox 360's processor from 10 to 15% as reported in January 2010 to a "single-digit percentage".^[43]

Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg stated that Microsoft's marketing campaign for Kinect would carry a similar scale to a console launch;^[42] the company was reported to have budgeted $500 million on advertising for the peripheral, such as television and print ads, campaigns with Burger King^[44] and Pepsi,^[45] and a launch event in New York City's Times Square on November 3 featuring a performance by Ne-Yo.^[46] Kinect was launched in North America on November 4, 2010;^[2] in Europe on November 10, 2010;^[1] in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore on November 18, 2010;^[4][47][48] and in Japan on November 20, 2010.^[49]

The Kinect release for the Xbox 360 was estimated to have sold eight million units in the first sixty days of release, earning the hardware the Guinness World Record for the "Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device".^[14] Over 10 million had been sold by March 2011.^[14] While seemingly successful, its launch titles were primarily family-oriented games (which could be designed around Kinect's functionality and limitations), which may have drawn new audiences, but did not have the selling power of major franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty—which were primarily designed around the Xbox 360 controller. Only an estimated 20% of the 55 million Xbox 360 owners had purchased the Kinect.^[14] The Kinect team recognized some of the downsides with more traditional games and Kinect, and continued ongoing development of the unit to be released as a second-generation unit, such as reducing the latency of motion detection and improving speech recognition. Microsoft provided news of these changes to the third-party developers to help them anticipate how the improvements can be integrated into the games.^[14]

Concurrent with the Kinect improvements, Microsoft's Xbox hardware team had started planning for the Xbox One around mid-2011. Part of early Xbox One specifications was that the new Kinect hardware would be automatically included with the console, so that developers would know that Kinect hardware would be available for any Xbox One, and hoping to encourage developers to take advantage of that.^[14] The Xbox One was first formally announced on May 23, 2013, and shown in more detail at E3 2013 in June. Microsoft stated at these events that the Xbox One would include the updated Kinect hardware and it would be required to be plugged in at all times for the Xbox One to function. This raised concerns across the video game media: privacy advocates argued that Kinect sensor data could be used for targeted advertising, and to perform unauthorized surveillance on users. In response to these claims, Microsoft reiterated that Kinect voice recognition and motion tracking can be disabled by users, that Kinect data cannot be used for advertising per its privacy policy, and that the console would not redistribute user-generated content without permission.^{[50][51][52][53][54][55]} Several other issues with the Xbox One's original feature set had also come up, such as the requirement to be always connected to the Internet, and created a wave of consumer backlash against Microsoft.^[14]

Microsoft announced in August 2013 that they had made several changes to the planned Xbox One release in response to the backlash. Among these was that the system would no longer require a Kinect unit to be plugged in to work, though it was still planned to package the Kinect with all Xbox One systems. However, this also required Microsoft to establish a US$500 price-point for the Xbox One/Kinect system at its November 2013 launch, US$100 more than the competing PlayStation 4 launched in the same time frame, which did not include any motion-sensing hardware.^[14] In the months after the Xbox One release, Microsoft decided to launch a Kinect-less Xbox One system in March 2014 at the same price as the PlayStation 4, after considering that the Kinect for Xbox One had not gotten the developer support, and sales of the Xbox One were lagging due to the higher price tag of the Kinect-bundled system. Richard Irving, a program group manager that oversaw Kinect, said that Microsoft had felt that it was more important to give developers and consumers the option of developing for or purchasing the Kinect rather than forcing the unit on them.^[14]

The removal of Kinect from the Xbox One retail package was the start of the rapid decline and phase-out of the unit within Microsoft. Developers like Harmonix that had been originally targeting games to use the Xbox One had put these games on hold until they knew there was enough of a Kinect install base to justify release, which resulted in a lack of games for the Kinect and reducing any consumer drive to buy the separate unit.^[14] Microsoft became bearish on the Kinect, making no mention of the unit at E3 2015 and announcing at E3 2016 that the upcoming Xbox One hardware revision, the Xbox One S, would not have a dedicated Kinect port; Microsoft offered a USB adapter for the Kinect, provided free during an initial promotional period after the console's launch.^[56] The more powerful Xbox One X also lacked the Kinect port and required this adapter.^[57] Even though developers still released Kinect-enabled games for the Xbox One, Microsoft's lack of statements related to the Kinect during this period led to claims that the Kinect was a dead project at Microsoft.^[58][59]

Microsoft formally announced it would stop manufacturing Kinect for Xbox One on October 25, 2017.^[10] Microsoft eventually discontinued the adapter in January 2018, stating that they were shifting to manufacture other accessories for the Xbox One and personal computers that were more in demand. This is considered by the media to be the point where Microsoft ceased work on the Kinect for the Xbox platform.^[14][57]

While the Kinect unit for the Xbox platform had petered out, the Kinect was being used in academia and other applications since around 2011. The functionality of the unit along with its low US$150 cost was seen to be an inexpensive means to add depth-sensing to existing applications, offsetting the high cost and unreliability of other 3D camera options at the time. In robotics, Kinect's depth-sensing would enable robots to determine the shape and approximate distances to obstacles and maneuver around them.^[60] Within the medical field, the Kinect could be used to monitor the shape and posture of a body in a quantifiable manner to enable improved health-care decisions.^[61]

Around November 2010, after the Kinect's launch, scientists, engineers, and hobbyists had been able to hack into the Kinect to determine what hardware and internal software it had used, leading to users finding how to connect and operate the Kinect with Microsoft Windows and OS X over USB, which has unsecured data from the various camera elements that could be read. This further led to prototype demos of other possible applications, such as a gesture-based user interface for the operating system similar to that shown in the film Minority Report, as well as pornographic applications.^[62][63] This mirrored similar work to hack the Wii Remote a few years earlier to use its low-cost hardware for more advanced applications beyond gameplay.^[64]

Adafruit Industries, having envisioned some of the possible applications of the Kinect outside of gaming, issued a security challenge related to the Kinect, offering prize money for the successful development of an open source software development kit (SDK) and hardware drivers for the Kinect, which came to be known as Open Kinect.^[65] Adafruit named the winner, Héctor Martín, by November 10, 2010,^[66][67] who had produced a Linux driver that allows the use of both the RGB camera and depth sensitivity functions of the device.^[68][69] It was later discovered that Johnny Lee, a core member of Microsoft's Kinect development team, had secretly approached Adafruit with the idea of a driver development contest and had personally financed it.^[70] Lee had said of the efforts to open the Kinect that "This is showing us the future...This is happening today, and this is happening tomorrow." and had engaged Adafruit with the contest as he been frustrated with trying to convince Microsoft's executives to explore the non-gaming avenue for the Kinect.^[71]

Microsoft initially took issue with users hacking into the Kinect, stating they would incorporate additional safeguards into future iterations of the unit to prevent such hacks.^[62] However, by the end of November 2010, Microsoft had turned on their original position and embraced the external efforts to develop the SDK.^[72] Kipman, in an interview with NPR, said

The first thing to talk about is, Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them, which hasn't happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That's what we call hacking, and that's what we have put a ton of work and effort to make sure doesn't actually occur. What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor. The sensor, again, as I talked earlier, has eyes and ears, and that's a whole bunch of noise that someone needs to take and turn into signal.

PrimeSense along with robotics firm Willow Garage and game developer Side-Kick launched OpenNI, a not-for-profit group to develop portable drivers for the Kinect and other natural interface (NI) devices, in November 2010. Its first set of drivers named NITE were released in December 2010.^[74][75] PrimeSense had also worked with Asus to develop a motion sensing device that competes with the Kinect for personal computers. The resulting product, the Wavi Xtion, was released in China in October 2011.^[76][77]

Microsoft announced in February 2011 that it was planning on releasing its own SDK for the Kinect within a few months, and which was officially released on June 16, 2011, but which was limited to non-commercial uses.^[78][79] The SDK enabled users to access the skeletal motion recognition system for up to two persons and the Kinect microphone array, features that had not been part of the prior Open Kinect SDK.^[80] Commercial interest in Kinect was still strong, with David Dennis, a product manager at Microsoft, stating "There are hundreds of organizations we are working with to help them determine what's possible with the tech".^[81] Microsoft launched its Kinect for Windows program on October 31, 2011, releasing a new SDK to a small number of companies, including Toyota, Houghton Mifflin, and Razorfish, to explore what was possible.^[81] At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January, Microsoft announced that it would release a dedicated Kinect for Windows unit along with the commercial SDK on February 1, 2012. The device included some hardware improvements, including support for "near mode" to recognize objects about 50 centimetres (20 in) in front of the cameras. The Kinect for Windows device was listed at US$250, US$100 more than the original Kinect since Microsoft had considered the Xbox 360 Kinect was subsidized through game purchases, Xbox Live subscriptions, and other costs.^[71] At the launch, Microsoft stated that more than 300 companies from over 25 countries were working on Kinect-ready apps with the new unit.^[82]

With the original announcement of the revised Kinect for Xbox One in 2013, Microsoft also confirmed it would have a second generation of Kinect for Windows based on the updated Kinect technology by 2014.^[83] The new Kinect 2 for Windows was launched on July 15, 2014, at a US$200 price.^[84] Microsoft opted to discontinue the original Kinect for Windows by the end of 2014.^[85] However, in April 2015, Microsoft announced they were also discontinuing the Kinect 2 for Windows, and instead directing commercial users to use the Kinect for Xbox One, which Microsoft said "perform identically". Microsoft stated that the demand for the Kinect 2 for Windows demand was high and difficult to keep up while also fulfilling the Kinect for Xbox One orders, and that they had found commercial developers successfully using the Kinect for Xbox One in their applications without issue.^[86]

With Microsoft's waning focus on Kinect, PrimeSense was bought by Apple, Inc. in 2013, which incorporated parts of the technology into its Face ID system for iOS devices.^[87][88]

Though Kinect had been cancelled, the ideas of it helped to spur Microsoft into looking more into accessibility for Xbox and its games. According to Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, they received positive comments from parents of disabled and impaired children who were happy that Kinect allowed their children to play video games. These efforts led to the development of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, released in 2018, as one of Microsoft's efforts in this area.^[89]

Microsoft had abandoned the idea of Kinect for video games, but still explored the potential of Kinect beyond that. Microsoft's Director of Communications Greg Sullivan stated in 2018 that "I think one of the things that is beginning to be understood is that Kinect was never really just the gaming peripheral...It was always more."^[90] Part of Kinect technology was integrated into Microsoft's HoloLens, first released in 2016.^[91]

Microsoft announced that it was working on a new version of a hardware Kinect model for non-game applications that would integrate with their Azure cloud computing services in May 2018. The use of cloud computing to offload some of the computational work from Kinect, as well as more powerful features enable by Azure such as artificial intelligence would improve the accuracy of the depth-sensing and reduce the power demand and would lead to more compact units, Microsoft had envisioned.^[92] The Azure Kinect device was released on June 27, 2019, at a price of US$400, while the SDK for the unit had been released in February 2019.^[93]

Sky UK announced a new line of Sky Glass television units to launch in 2022 that incorporate the Kinect technology in partnership with Microsoft. Using the Kinect features, the viewer will be able to control the television through motion controls and audio commands, and supports social features such as social viewing.^[94]

Microsoft announced that the Azure Kinect hardware kit will be discontinued in October 2023, and will refer users to third party suppliers for spare parts.^[95]

An example infrared image taken by the Kinect infrared (left), and the same image revisualized into a depth map using color gradients from white (near) to blue (far)

The depth and motion sensing technology at the core of the Kinect is enabled through its depth-sensing. The original Kinect for Xbox 360 used structured light for this: the unit used a near-infrared pattern projected across the space in front of the Kinect, while an infrared sensor captured the reflected light pattern. The light pattern is deformed by the relative depth of the objects in front it, and mathematics can be used to estimate that depth based on several factors related to the hardware layout of the Kinect. While other structure light depth-sensing technologies used multiple light patterns, Kinect used as few as one as to achieve a high rate of 30 frames per second of depth sensing. Kinect for Xbox One switched over to using time of flight measurements. The infrared projector on the Kinect sends out modulated infrared light which is then captured by the sensor. Infrared light reflecting off closer objects will have a shorter time of flight than those more distant, so the infrared sensor captures how much the modulation pattern had been deformed from the time of flight, pixel-by-pixel. Time of flight measurements of depth can be more accurate and calculated in a shorter amount of time, allowing for more frames-per-second to be detected.^[96]

Once Kinect has a pixel-by-pixel depth image, Kinect uses a type of edge detection here to delineate closer objects from the background of the shot, incorporating input from the regular visible light camera. The unit then attempts to track any moving objects from this, with the assumption that only people will be moving around in the image, and isolates the human shapes from the image. The unit's software, aided by artificial intelligence, performs segmentation of the shapes to try to identify specific body parts, like the head, arms, and hands, and track those segments individually. Those segments are used to construct a 20-point skeleton of the human body, which then can be used by game or other software to determine what actions the person has performed.^[97]

Kinect for Xbox 360 was a combination of Microsoft built software and hardware. The hardware included a range chipset technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which developed a system consisting of an infrared projector and camera and a special microchip that generates a grid from which the location of a nearby object in 3 dimensions can be ascertained.^[98]