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You might need to build ROS packages from source anyways depending on your architecture. Another option can be to wait until the next release supports 13.10.

Basically you are right. You should only need to write a hardware driver for the robot itself. There is a kinect driver in ROS. What you will need in addition is a hardware description URDF of your robot so all algorithms know where sensors, etc. is actually mounted. Once this setup is complete there are navigation and SLAM algorithms that should work out of the box.