Kinect + DS + Autonomous = Controlled auton?

[MaxKinect]

Team 494 (Bill Maxwell) has been working with Kinect since its introduction

One Handed Kinect FPS Hack - Better Than Mouse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j9UhxtmWmA

This is a device driver that is designed to replace a controller.
It will work on the drive station and provide joystick info to the driver station program which will be sent to the crio.
The minimum distance the sensor will work is 17 inches; therefore the sensor must be elevated above the drive station pointed downward.
This means that only the drivers can control the robot using the kinect.
This makes the kinect legal for the drive station.

Field use is possible, but might have some problems.
First the sensor is super safe in its light output, 8 million units have been sold to be used by children standing in front and looking straight at sensor.
A laptop can be used on the robot, the kinect sensor is connected to the usb port on the laptop, its extra 12volts can be supplied by the robot battery.
It is very legal to connect a laptop to the crio's network port.
This gives you unlimited programming possibilities.

Now for the field use problems:
Based on our test the sensor will work to about 28 feet in low light.
If the sensor is moved outside into the sunlight its range drops to less than 4 feet.
Different events will have different lighting, how much this will affect the kinect is unknown, and any modification of the kinect light output would make its safety unknown and therefore very illegal.

The next problem is that multiple Kinects used on the field could interfere with each other. People testing this find the interference low with 3 units, but what if everyone on the field is using kinect?

The final problem is that FIRST may just say NO.

I hope everyone will work toward making depth sensors standard for FIRST, because they are the future of robotics.