Chris Burns for SlashGear—Inventor / developer Arthur Wait of Silicon Valley took home $10,000 this week for winning Microsoft’s most recent Robotics @Home Competition with his fabulous new Smart Tripod. This device takes several components such as the Eddie Robot Platform, a Kinect, and a Microsoft RDS 4, and creates a perfect companion for the at-home do it yourself aficionado. This tripod is a robot we would not mind keeping in the corner for daily use, that’s for certain!

Microsoft Robotics is behind this whole adventure with their Robotics @Home competition and Robotics Developer Studio 4 (aka RDS 4). This software will allow you to create robots at home without actually picking up a bit of hardware to construct them yourself. The winner of the most recent Robotics @Home competition Arthur Wait designed his own robot, then went the extra step and constructed it in the real world for this event specifically.

After grand prize there was also a First Prize winner for this competition, this given to Team Elderly Assistant – a slightly creepy home-monitoring robot made to watch and ##### older adults. Second prize went to Team Plant Sitter, a robot made to take care of household plants.

Each of these devices just so happen to use Kinect in their setups though that was not a stipulation of the contest. Check out our timeline below to see how the Microsoft Kinect has been popping up in our everyday news cycle and be amazed at its spread!