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Microsoft's Kinect recruited as Korean border guard

The motion-detection system aims to catch people crossing the border between the two Koreas, says Kotaku.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
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The Kinect is pulling border guard duty.
The Kinect is pulling border guard duty. CNET

Microsoft's Kinect now has an overseas job, though it doesn't sound too glamorous.

A Kinect-based software system designed by South Korean programmer Jae Kwan Ko has been assigned border guard duty at the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, Kotaku reported on Monday, citing Korean news site Hankooki. The system's job is to identify any living thing that tries to cross the border and determine if it's human or animal. If it's a human, then the system alerts the authorities.

"I've never even thought of a game system performing national defense tasks," Ko reportedly said, indicating that he was unaware of his creation's role in guarding the DMZ. The system is also slated for an upgrade that will help it detect heartbeats, the same feature found on the Xbox One version of the Kinect.