'The US Xbox team had gone pretty far [with the technology] but it had a few failings,' Jamie said. 'After a few minutes the whole system would break down and lose track of your body because it was trying to predict where you were [in the present] based on your motion in the past... That's all very well when your motion is predictable, but when it's very fast or you change direction suddenly everything becomes very unpredictable. And once the system had lost track of you, you would have to restart.'

To solve this problem, and to help Kinect recognise body parts no matter what they look like, the Cambridge team created a database of millions of computer-generated images to train the motion-capture system. This allows Kinect to study each group of pixels in an image and work out what part of the body they resemble, gradually building up a 3D picture of the person and how their body parts are positioned. By replacing the need for people to wear motion-capture markers, the Kinect has created the possibility for more widespread use of 3D cameras - and numerous non-gaming applications for the device have since been created.

Several research groups, including one at Microsoft Research Cambridge, are working on ways to use the Kinect in keyhole surgery - either to control images on a computer screen without touching anything or to give better control of robotic instruments inside the body. Jamie said of this: 'By putting the Kinect into operating theatres, we hope to enable touch-free control of digital data... We're designing a system by which a surgeon can make gestures to bring images up on the screen, flick through medical scans, move them left and right or zoom in and out.' The Microsoft team is collaborating with surgeons at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge to optimise the technology for medical use.

John Robinson, chairman of the MacRobert Award judging panel, said: 'Everything about Microsoft Research's Kinect project makes it a worthy winner of this prestigious award. Yet again, British engineers have solved a seemingly intractable problem that stumped the rest of the world... Motion capture in real time has made Kinect hugely successful and what was originally developed as a game is now poised to revolutionise the way we use computers in the future.'