$2,000 bounty for Kinect for Xbox 360 open source drivers

Adafruit is offering their first ever "X prize" to the first person to come up with an Open Source USB driver for the Xbox 360 Kinect. For more details on the "X prize" visit the Adafruit Blog post on The Open Kinect project.

Now for a little background information on Kinect (taken from the blog post)


What is Kinect?

Kinect for Xbox 360, or simply Kinect, is a “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images.

What is the hardware?

The Kinect sensor is a horizontal bar connected to a small base with a motorized pivot, and is designed to be positioned lengthwise below the video display. The device features an “RGB camera, depth sensor and multi-array microphone running proprietary software”, which provides full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition, and voice recognition capabilities.

How does it work?

For full details visit Wired for a great article on Kinect

Image from Wired article

Imagine being able to use this off the shelf camera for Xbox for Mac, Linux, Win, embedded systems, robotics, etc.