One of the smartest things that Microsoft’s done around Kinect was to make it as hackable as possible. That’s not an entirely altruistic move — it shifts more Kinects and makes it more of a “standard” — but it’s still cool. Those with a robotic fetish and a Kinect can now officially play around with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4.
The RDS4 toolkit includes a full simulation kit, so you could build a completely virtual robot, but it’s also possible to use the kit with a full real-world Kinect and whatever motors you have handy. As this video shows, those of you with a hankering for your very own robot butler can do so quite simply.
That video refers to a reference platform, helpfully labelled Eddie (but hopefully not a product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation) to help get budding roboteers started: