Microsoft searches for new ideas in its summer hackathon

[MUSIC] I'm Ian Sherr on Microsoft's campus where the largest private hackatron in the world is was happening right behind me, as part of Microsoft's one week that happens every year. It was started by Satya Nadella, the current CEO, as a way to inspire new innovation at Microsoft. Among the things that have come out of it are some interesting products, like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, for people People with disabilities and dyslexia technology that is in a lot of Microsoft software these days. So let's take a look at what's inside. [MUSIC] We're all here to participate in the hackathon. We're in the Hackatron tent today And we've decided to focus on the Xbox and how we could expand that platform to go through for therapeutics. So what kind of therapeutics, explain that to me. So there's a lot of different therapeautics that people utilize, some for autism, maybe some for a sports injury. I think a lot of people have had maybe an ankle injury where they've had to use a band. Or a wrist injury where they've had to use a ball. All of those, kind of, can be boring, and for parents that may have to take their kids back and forth for autism visits, they don't actually do a lot of the exercises at home, and so when they're not doing those exercises, they're not getting the betterment of themselves in it, and so we're thinking about, could we make that Xbox enabled therapy. We're working on a little bit of a hardware hack To see if there would be maybe a glove that could fit for maybe a ball injury that could stick and connected up to some wires and connected to the Xbox with the new adaptive controller cuz it has the ability to have other plugs So that then we can utilize the game for those activities. [MUSIC] So this is smart tattoos, so this is temporary tattoos that enable you to have Touch, so you can control things in your enviroment from your screen or other surfaces via Bluetooth, so it's next generation wearables with fabrication processes that are easy enough for anyone to do. And your goal with this hackathon is just to show all the different ways it can be used? Yes, simply, I mean we can't think of everything Thing. So the goal was to come up with a fabrication process that would facilitate anybody in the company to play with it, whether they want to augment their controllers, prosthetics, keyboard\g ability, or for just wearability in general. So we're gonna demo. So we've got an instrument on the arm that actually anyone can play their own instrument, so. [SOUND] [MUSIC] And you can also change the instrument. [MUSIC] You know? So I think of next generation bands or musicians, right? Or even dancers, if they want to make music on their arms. And then we also have [UNKNOWN] Being able to control things in your environment. Wow. Yeah. So I can just turn on the different lights? Yeah. Right, so basically VIA bluetooth we can send signals to anywhere. So this kinda opens up the door. And this is why were here today. So that we can get people to kinda play and experiment. [MUSIC] So that's a look at some of the projects happening under this big tent at this hack-a-ton. You want to learn more, you can go to CNET.com or you can follow me on Twitter at [UNKNOWN]. Meanwhile, I'm gonna look at some more cool new stuff. [MUSIC]