Communications of the ACM
Robots Get Kinect's 'eyes and Ears'
Melonee Wise has put together a tutorial on how to connect a Kinect to an iRobot at ROS.org, a nonprofit community site for hosting open-source robotics software.
Photo courtesy of Melonee Wise
Microsoft has added Kinect's software development kit (SDK) to its free Robotics Developer Studio. Microsoft says that access to raw data as well as Kinect's pattern-recognition algorithms will enable roboticists to control their robots with gestures.
"Kinect's SDK can now be used with our free Robotics Developer Studio to create natural user interfaces for robots with full access to Kinect smart routines like skeletal recognition," says Microsoft Robotics' Stathis Papaefstathiou. "In addition, we know from our user base that Kinect can also be useful for autonomous navigation scenarios."
In the fall, Microsoft plans to add new routines for directly supporting autonomous navigation tasks. Although roboticists developers will not be able to use the Kinect SDK to develop commercial products, nonprofit organizations will be able to add navigational algorithms for maneuvering robots in ways search-and-rescue robots can now only move by remote control.
From EE Times
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