Microsoft announced Monday that it will release a non-commercial SDK for the Kinect, allowing developers to create new uses for the motion-based system beyond gaming.
"The community that has blossomed since the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 in November shows the breadth of invention and depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology," Steve Clayton, Microsoft storyteller, wrote in a blog post. "Already, researchers, academics and enthusiasts are thinking through what's next in natural and intuitive technology."
The announcement was made at a gathering hosted by Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, and Don Mattrick, president of the Interactive Entertainment Business. The Kinect for Windows SDK is being developed by Microsoft Research and Mattrick's team and will be available in the spring as a free download.
"[It] will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to key pieces of the Kinect system—such as the audio technology, system application programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor itself," Clayton wrote.
Microsoft pointed to possible advances in health and education, highlighting a team at the University of Washington's Biorobotics Lab, which used Kinect with a commercially available PHANTOM Omni Haptic Device to explore how robotic surgery could be enhanced by incorporating the sense of feel.
"Supporting this community and enabling creativity around natural user interfaces (NUI) is important to us, and our hope is that this SDK will ignite further creativity in an already vibrant ecosystem of enthusiasts," Clayton wrote.
In the wake of Kinect's November release, a number of hackers went to work on the device, much to Microsoft's chagrin. Adafruit Industries announced a $2,000 prize for anyone who managed to hack into the Kinect so that it could be used with hardware other than the Xbox 360. Google's Matt Cutts then promised two $1,000 rewards for, "the person or team that writes the coolest open-source app, demo, or program using the Kinect," as well as the person or team who does the best job of simplifying the process of writing Kinect-driven Linux applications.
What was Redmond's response? "Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," the company said at the time. Microsoft later denied that anyone had actually "hacked" the Kinect, arguing that "someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection - which we didn't protect, by design - and reads the inputs from the sensor."
Efforts at hacking didn't seem to affect sales; Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer announced at CES this year that the company sold 8 million Kinect sensors since its November release.