HITB announces HITB2012AMS Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 7 May 2012 – Following last year’s successful LEGO Mindstorms Hackerspaces Challenge, HITB is excited to be working with Microsoft for this year’s CommSec Challenge which will bring players into the world of motion capture devices. The Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge takes place on May 24th and 25th alongside HITBSecConf2012 – Amsterdam.

The Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge throws down the gauntlet to participating hackerspaces of the HITB CommSec Village to work with the Microsoft Kinect for Windows platform to complete a challenge within a 24 hour time period – the winners will walk away with EUR1000 in cash.

Teams of two from hackerspaces from all over The Netherlands will use the Kinect skeletal tracking features to develop a system for translating movements into words on screen. After 24 hours, teams will perform their moves in a head-to-head challenge to see who can display sentences on the screen the quickest, using only the Kinect as a reader device and their body movements as the input. The fastest teams move on until there is only one team left in motion to walk away with the grand prize.

With a prize provided by Microsoft and run by the HITBSecConf organising committee, participants will have to find how best to get the highest rate of character output from their movements.

“Last year, the participants and us had a great time re-living our childhood through the joys of LEGO and robotics. For 2012 we’re very excited to be working with Microsoft to see what interesting solutions participants will come up with to translate body movements into digital text”, said Barry ‘fish_’ van Kampen, security consultant at ITQ and team lead for HITB in The Netherlands.

“Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows platform has transformed the way people interact with technology. Now it’s time for developers to help unlock the possibilities,” he continued.

For further details on the Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge and to see the list of participating hackerspaces, please see: http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2012ams/