Kinect is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console and Windows PCs. 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 and spoken commands. The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360's audience beyond its typical gamer base. Kinect competes with the Wii Remote Plus and PlayStation Move with PlayStation Eye motion controllers for the Wii and PlayStation 3 home consoles, respectively. A version for Windows was released on February 1, 2012.

Microsoft released a non-commercial Kinect software development kit for Windows 7 on June 16, 2011, with a commercial version following at a later date. This SDK will allow .NET developers to write Kinecting apps in C++/CLI, C#, or Visual Basic .NET.

Kinect Specs

Sensor
Colour and depth-sensing lenses
Voice microphone array
Tilt motor for sensor adjustment
Fully compatible with existing Xbox 360 consoles

Field of View
Horizontal field of view: 57 degrees
Vertical field of view: 43 degrees
Physical tilt range: ± 27 degrees
Depth sensor range: 1.2m - 3.5m

Data Streams
320×240 16-bit depth @ 30 frames/sec
640×480 32-bit colour@ 30 frames/sec
16-bit audio @ 16 kHz

Skeletal Tracking System
Tracks up to 6 people, including 2 active players
Tracks 20 joints per active player
Ability to map active players to Live Avatars

Audio System
Live party chat and in-game voice chat (requires Xbox Live Gold Membership)
Echo cancellation system enhances voice input
Speech recognition in multiple

Widely used in researches:

	Shahram Izadi, David Kim, Otmar Hilliges, David Molyneaux, Richard Newcombe, Pushmeet Kohli, Jamie Shotton, Steve Hodges, Dustin Freeman, Andrew Davison, and Andrew Fitzgibbon,KinectFusion: Real-time 3D Reconstruction and Interaction Using a Moving Depth Camera, ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, October 2011
	REALTIME PERFORMANCE-BASED FACIAL ANIMATION Thibaut Weise, Sofien Bouaziz, Hao Li, Mark Pauly ACM Transactions on Graphics, Proceedings of the 38th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition 2011, 08/2011 -SIGGRAPH 2011[paper]  [video]   [fast forward]   [bibtex]