The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

Here is a sample Demo video":

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This SDK includes the following features:

• 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.

• Sample code and documentation

  The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.

• Easy installation

  The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).

Download:  Kinect SDK for Windows

Xander has one of the best collection of links for the Kinect SDK I’ve seen.    Kinect SDK is Finally Here!

What is the GardenBot?

GardenBot is a garden monitoring system. This means that you put sensors in your garden, and GardenBot will show you charts of the conditions in your garden — so you can see the world the way your plants see it.

With all the steps you need to build one of your own… the GardenBot is a great summer project. And, it’s easily expandable too. Add wireless, expand your garden size, make it solar powered… tweet your garden stats. The options are endless…

UPCOMING EVENTS:

- March 9th:  Expanding Your Horizons (Maine Robotics Workshops) UMaine
- March 9th:  Summer Camp Fair, UMaine Field House, 1-4 pm
- March 20th:  Maine Youth Camp Association Summer Camp Fair, Portland, 1-4 pm
- April 30th:  Southern Maine Robot Track Meet, Auburn Middle School, 9 am
- May 7th:  Northern Maine Robot Track Meet, Maine Maritime Academy, 9 am

You can see more from Maine Robotics via there website:  Maine Robotics

Procrastineering has an excellent article titled: Simulated PS2 Controller for Autonomously playing Guitar Hero – Ok, so it’s not quite a robot… but still, it’s pretty slick.

Here is a sample of the autonomous game:

But roughly, what I do for playing Guitar Hero is:

1. Unwarp the fret board so it is square (using a homography)
2. Use a template match to find notes along each column.
3. Track notes over time to ensure they are not spurrious.
4. Once notes hit a trigger line, queue the button press.

Robotics Academy (the makers of RobotC) are working on a new virtual environment for your NXT based and VEX based robots.

You’ll be able to drive your robot around on the

• undersea
• outer space
• robotic competition
• mountains

You’ll be able to simulate real-world effects for NXTG, LabVIEW and ROBOTC.

Ideally, you’ll be able to create your own virtual worlds as well.

The expected release date for this, is March 2011.