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In an episode of Better Off Ted starring Portia De Rossi (DeGeneres) called Racial Sensitivity one of the characters is overlooked by a new technology made by Veridian Dynamics, a fictionally over the top amoral company. On the show one of Veronica’s (De Rossi) employees is a black engineer. The near-infra-red cameras have more difficulty with darker skin. He attempted to go about his day, but the doors would not open for him, and he got stuck inside the building over night.
In a case of film imitating life, well known black journalist N-Gai Croal was testing a game at the E3 video game convention when it was noticed that Microsoft’s new controller-less motion-sensing camera could not see him.
Microsoft could be a perfect match for Veridian Dynamics, from all the foilbles the company has gotten into in the past. Some suggest that there was a bug in N-Gai Croal’s demo. At this time it is only conjectured as to what happened. But since the near- infrared camera’s defect was well known enough to get into a sitcom plot, further rumors are certain to develop.
“When game consultant and former Newsweek writer N’Gai Croal gave [Burnout] a test drive, however, the game had trouble reading his steering actions. The footwork (gas and brakes) worked fine, but Croal couldn’t steer his car at all,” Bitmob writes.
“It wasn’t clear whether this was a problem of calibration differences between Tsunoda and Croal’s very different body types, or if Croal’s crazy dreadlocks threw Natal off. But it was working just fine when Tsunoda was at the ‘wheel.’”
Research has actually been performed on the difficulties that near-infra-red cameras (Project Natal features an infra-red camera) have with dark skin, with the following study finding that the technology does indeed have more difficulty with darker skin:
“NIRS detects light absorbance of haemoglobin chromophores to determine tissue oxygen saturation (StO2). As skin colour is also determined by the presence of chromophores, it is plausible that NIRS signal quality may be affected by dark skin pigmentation.”
“In patients with a dark pigmented skin, NIRS StO2 measurements should be interpreted with caution, as melanin clearly interferes with the quality of the reflected NIRS signal,” the paper concludes.
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