SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OpenNI™, the industry-led organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware, announced today the opening of the OpenNI™ Arena. The Arena is the primary platform for developers of Natural Interaction™ (NI) and motion technology apps and games to showcase their applications and game demos to the developer community, as well as gain exposure to potential publishers, manufacturers, app stores, consumers and other commercial parties that are interested in their applications.
Part of the OpenNI.org website, the OpenNI Arena lets developers collaborate on projects, exchange ideas and knowledge, test apps and create new ways to use motion technologies. OpenNI is the free and open-source framework to develop NI apps, and the only standard designed to enable developers to create applications for any sensor, using any middleware, and on any platform.
“The OpenNI Arena is a great resource for developers to start to gain traction and contacts on the business side of Natural Interaction solutions and applications,” said Kent Chien, General Manager of Multimedia Business Unit, ASUS. “We are excited to be able to provide the ASUS Xtion Pro and Xtion PRO LIVE hardware for developers to create new and exciting applications and think that the OpenNI Arena is the perfect place to showcase the talent.”
“OpenNI is already in extensive use, with more than 2000 developers working with the standard to create hundreds of applications,” said Aviad Maizels, Founder and President, PrimeSense™, one of the founding members of the OpenNI organization. “The launch of the OpenNI Arena gives developers a community of collaboration, as well as exposure to commercial opportunities for OpenNI-compliant devices, apps and games in the new living room environment.”
As TVs have evolved from simple screens to Connected TVs, or Smart TVs, they are connected to the Internet, they can run applications, they’re gaining processing power and they can run games. All of these new services and capabilities require more than the current remote control solution. Many of the top tier manufacturers are integrating NI into their products for everything from changing channels and navigating the user interface to browsing media and controlling games.
Developers who are interested in publishing apps on the OpenNI Arena can find the process, format and guidelines at http://arena.opennNI.org. The site will not feature commerce facilities, as it is designed to be a free-of-charge marketing and promotional tool for developers.
The OpenNI organization is backed by its founding industry members: PrimeSense leader in sensing and recognition solutions, joined by experts in personal robotics applications, Willow Garage; Side-kick, a leading production house for motion control games and ASUS, providing hardware for purchase to promote Natural Interaction applications ASUS.
About OpenNI™
The OpenNI organization is an industry-led organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware.
As a first step towards this goal, the organization has made available an open source framework – the OpenNI framework – which provides an application programming interface (API) for writing applications utilizing natural interaction. This API covers communication with both low level devices (e.g. vision and audio sensors), as well as high-level middleware solutions (e.g. for visual tracking using computer vision). Established in November 2010, the founding members of the OpenNI organization are PrimeSense, Willow Garage, Side-Kick and ASUS. For more information, please visit www.openni.org and follow @OpenNI on Twitter.