Kinect for Windows SDK Beta

Well its finally here. The Kinect for Windows SDK beta has been a while coming since the first Kinect was hacked just a few days after the initial launch but it is finally here. Its great to see Microsoft Research listening to the community to provide this free SDK.

My hope is that a UC developer out there somewhere sees the potential for the Kinect in the UC space especially with Lync. With it’s a ability to track sound and depth perception I have to think there is an application tie with Lync to take Telepresence to a place its never been before.

This SDK includes the following features (From the download site):

• Raw sensor streams.Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.

• Skeletal tracking. The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.

• Advanced audio capabilities. Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.

Download it here:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/download.aspx

Comments welcomed.

VoIPNorm