As the years have gone on, the Xbox Kinect has sadly become something of a paperweight for many console owners, especially since the Series X and S don't support it. Visit your local second-hand shop and you can often find them piled up looking sad in the corner. Yet, despite never truly catching on, there's no denying the Kinect is an impressive bit of kit. As a result, one company has found a use for it to help run their complex grocery warehouses.

In a video produced by YouTube's Tom Scott, the company Ocado is shown using the technology in their automatic packing facilities to help determine customers' shopping orders. While it's said that some of that packing is done by humans, there are mechanical arms as well, and it's these arms that need the Xbox Kinect to help them out.

As evidenced at 2:25 in the video, the Xbox Kinect 2.0 helps determine the best grasp point for the items (that's so your food doesn't explode and go everywhere), along with ensuring it's placed in the correct carrier. It's described as a "3D camera", and the video is an indicator of how the peripheral can actually be very beneficial outside of gaming.

Of course, Kinect is no longer a thing with Xbox now. After being released for the Xbox 360 and later bundled in with the Xbox One launch consoles, it was eventually scrapped as the motion-tracking device was never fully embraced by the community. Still, it's good to see the technology still proving highly useful in 2021.

Found any other interesting uses for the Xbox Kinect? Let us know in the comments below

[source youtube.com, via windowscentral.com]