The Kinect sensor provides a genuinely new way for a computer to make some sense of the world around it. The fusion of a camera, a directional microphone system, and a depth sensor into a single, mass-market device provides an opportunity for software developers to advance the field of computer interaction in all kinds of exciting ways.

It is now possible to create programs that use the Kinect sensor to create a computer interface with the ability to recognize users and understand their intentions using a “natural” user interface consisting of gestures and spoken commands. In addition, the device’s capabilities have a huge range of possible applications, from burglar alarms to robot controllers.

Start Here! Learn the Kinect™ API gives you an overview of how the Kinect sensor works and how the Kinect for Windows SDK exposes each of the data sources. The book introduces each of the sensors in the context of solving a well-defined problem. The full source code is provided for each example program. You will also find plenty of ideas for further development of both the sample programs and your own applications.

In addition to an overview of the Kinect for Windows SDK, this book explores the fundamentals of the signals being processed: how video, audio, depth, and 3D skeleton information can be represented in a program. Also included is coverage of specific programming issues that are highly relevant to the creation of programs that deal with large streams of data from sensors, including memory allocation, creating unmanaged code to improve performance, and threading. If you want to learn more about these aspects of program development, you will find good coverage and sample code that works. Although this book doesn’t cover every Kinect for Windows SDK, it provides a solid starting point for experimentation and further development.