Kinect for Windows SDK ready for Download – Microsoft Research

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.

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).

This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version
is expected to be available at a later date.