Microsoft continues to expand its official support for its Kinect motion controller camera. Today the company announced that it has released a version of its Kinect SDK specifically for development in robotics. The free software download, officially called the Kinect Services for RDS, is now available at the Microsoft Research web site.
In a post on Microsoft's official Robotics blog site, it states that this new version is built on top of the Kinect SDK for Windows which was released as a free download earlier this year. The post adds that users of the SDK can also expect to see more updates later this fall. It states, "We know that there are many practical issues for applying the Kinect technologies to robotics capabilities that we will be addressing in upcoming RDS releases."
The blog site also goes into more details on how Microsoft wants to help expand technology associated with robotics. It says that there has been a lot of progress in this area from other sources like universities, research labs and others. It states, "We didn’t want to replicate these efforts, so we decided to focus on leveraging Microsoft’s vast portfolio of technologies, and the brainpower of Microsoft Research to develop capabilities, scenarios, and experiences that are necessary to push Robotics over the last 'hump' to become part of our everyday lives."
Microsoft released the Kinect motion controller camera as an add-on to the Xbox 360 game console last November. Later this fall Microsoft plans a new dashboard update for the Xbox 360 that will expand the features and uses of the Kinect controller for the game console.
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