If you've nursed a casual interest in robotics - maybe you love Asimov or you've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix - but lack funding or a hard robotics background, you might find Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 a good place to start. Just released for beta, the software allows programmers to develop their own applications to control robots using a Windows PC as the CPU and a Kinect sensor as eyes and ears, further demonstrating that of Kinect's large number of useful applications, 'playing video games' is lowest among them.
As with most Microsoft endeavors, the company is only providing software, and they've released a reference platform design spec for third parties wishing to develop robots for the platform. You're not going to be able to make your own doomsday device, but you might be able to make something useful for around the house. Parallax, Inc has already manufactured a hardware kit based on that document, for a cute robot/chair named Eddie, currently available for preorder.
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