The days of losing your wallet, keys, and TV remote may be numbered, thanks to research by computer scientist Shahriar Nirjon and John Stankovic at the University of Virginia in Charlotsville. They've developed "Kinsight [PDF]," a Kinect-based system that can keep track of the location of household items in the room:
LinkIt works by tracking people and detecting the size and shape of any objects they interact with. Each object is compared to Kinsight's database for the house and either recognised or added to the list.
By following the location of objects over time, Kinsight can even distinguish between two identical-looking things - if it records a mug that seems to have jumped from the living room to the kitchen without passing through the space between, for example, it knows it is likely to be two mugs. The system can locate fist-sized objects with an accuracy of 13 centimetres.