Craig Mundie talks NUI and Avatar Kinects with Dean of Engineering and IT at the University of Sydney

On Tuesday, as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie demonstrates a virtual persona based teleconferencing technology known as Avatar Kinect which was announced at CES 2011 earlier this year.

This public demonstration was the second in Australia after the Melbourne event a day before, and was in attendance of over 300 people in Sydney, a hundred more than the first.

The lecture focused on next generation computer human interaction interaction “Natural User Interfaces” (NUI), set to expand the possibilities of sterile computer control in the operating theatre, remote virtual gaming and a virtual receptionist. Natural user interfaces is set to remove the learning curve from today’s user interfaces, taking advantage of metaphors from the physical world.

Craig explains that while the step from telephone was to television, the next step is telepresence. I think that the use of an avatar is a great step forward, especially since many of today’s users are already comfortable with taking upon an online persona through many of the video games available today.

Microsoft Research have been rather active in NUI development, and many of its work could be found found explained in quite simple terms at MSDN ‘s Channel9 since TechFest 2010.