Can Your Webcam Do This?

Yes, in that it uses structured light (like the Kinect), rather than time-of-flight. I think that the interesting part of this is that they seem to be planning to provide the hardware to OEMs for incorporation into laptops etc.

It seems a shame that those chose to demo IR illumination ("seeing in the dark") over the real depth sensing ability of the device. The idea of using structured light is really interesting - see http://users.dickinson.edu/~jmac/selected-talks/kinect.pdf.

The Asus XTION is a good alternative to the Kinect if you're looking to get into this sort of technology, as it requires no external power source (unlike the Kinect). There is also the Creative Senz3D, which uses time-of-flight rather than structure light, but I haven't had a chance to play with one (http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Gesture-Recognition-Personal-...).