Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge: Get a Move On

Every year, HITB hosts the CommSec Challenge which aims to celebrate the fun in all things technology. Last year, the LEGO Mindstorm Challenge saw hackerspaces returning to their childhood days to hack together their best battle-ready robot out of LEGO for bragging rights and cold hard cash.

For 2012, thanks to support from Microsoft, we will be bringing players into the world of motion capture devices!

The Kinect for Windows CommSec Challenge throws down the gauntlet to participating hackerspaces to work on a challenge utilizing the Kinect for Windows platform within a 24 hour time period.

Teams of 2 from each participating hackerspace must use the Kinect’s 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 motionless team left standing to walk away with the grand prize of EUR1000!

Kinect for Windows is able to track 20 joints from 2 people in a scene simultaneously, so teams will have an interesting challenge in how they can best get the highest rate of  characters output from their movements.

Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows platform has transformed the way people interact with technology. Now it’s time for you to help unlock the possibilities. Get a move on!

Microsoft has provided the prize for this promotion, but Hack-in-the-box is the Contest Sponsor and is solely responsible for the conduct and administration of this Contest.

Questions? Contact Barry ‘fish’ van Kampen: bvankampen@hackinthebox.org

KINECT FOR WINDOWS RESOURCES & DOCUMENTATION:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/resources.aspx

KINECT FOR WINDOWS SDK: 

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/