Kinect usage at competitions
 

Is anyone here using the kinect at competitions? I wasn't too surprised to not see anyone use it at the week 1 event I worked at, but I figure that some teams would start using it by now. If you are do you mind sharing how you are using it?

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

I saw only one team using it at Lake Superior, but then I was only watching (from the floor) during our team's matches and some of elims.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We used it at the Rutgers MAR event, I don't know if any other teams did. Didn't have to debate who got the station though :)

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

I attempted to help our team set it up to be used at Traverse City, however, and we were even given some time on the field during lunch to test it (because there were problems the first day with us using a USB hub, apparently that was not working with the extra cable length, we were unable to test during it on setup night) (I'd like to thank the field personnel for trying to accommodate us setting it up).

However, I was severely disappointed in how it functioned, and I can't say for sure if it was due to the setup at the field or just the Kinect in general, but this is what I was seeing:

Reliability: I was frequently seeing a loss of the control enable signal (button 9) which indicates that the users arms are in valid position (extended in the same xy plane). I am a bit suspicious that this could be due to cable length.

Sensitivity: The controls I had setup the robot to use (left/right leg forward/backward) seemed extremely sensitive, making them essentially impossible to control. Depending on the posture I stood with, I would see the buttons for leg forward/backward activating sporadically.

Speed: Our driver station (not a classmate, but it had an atom) was abysmal for controlling using the kinect, it was processing 4 or 5 FPS max. We had to setup my programming laptop to get decent results (which left me unable to make programming changes outside of extended periods of downtime) and was draining the battery much more quickly, so we eventually were going to need an external power supply installed on the field.

Height: I'm about 6' with long arms, and the Kinect was barely able to pickup my elbows while I stood in the box.

The above issues pretty much killed all excitement about using the Kinect for me. When you can't drive the robot correctly because control is constantly cutting out, and the robot is picking up different gestures based on you slightly changes in stance, and it's not picking up your full range of motion...

I wanted to try out using different gestures for control (legs and head to the sides instead of legs forward/back, along with some logic to continue the last input when the control enable signal vanishes), but if that doesn't work I feel I will need to recompile the KinectServer in order to get it to be less sensitive.

All of this combined with the fact that we were doing really well in standard autonomous, kinda made me think it wasn't really worth fussing with anymore.
I'm hoping to do some off season projects with it once we can permanently unbag the robot, but until then there are lots more things to worry about.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We will be using it at the Los Angeles regional this weekend, mostly to delay/activate our launcher to ensure we deconflict with other teammate's autonomous modes. I saw too many shots miss in Week 1 because 2 balls were trying to enter the 3-point target at the same time.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Team 1912 Combustion will be using it at the Bayou Regional this week. Hopefully it works..

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

A couple of teams at Alamo and a couple of teams at FLR. All it's really good for is taking up floor space.
It's a joke.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Team 23 used the kinect at the WPI regional. I believe it was used to tip the bridge.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

It's a novel implement and does have some legitimate uses (see HOTs recent technical design whitepaper) but using it for main control in Hybrid mode is hardly better/more reproducible than a sheer open-loop implementation in all but the simplest of autonomous routines.

We might play with it a bit offseason in case it is legal for use again, perhaps to use it in a way similar to HOT.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Only saw one team using it at ON GTR East Regional, and that was only for one round. It kind of didn't seem to do anything.

I'm thinking someone should just like breakdance in the Kinect Station. You'd get massive street cred.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We joked around about having our human player go in and pretend to shoot baskets while the robot ran autonomous, but decided we didn't want to accidentally misrepresent ourselves to the judges :p

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

When I saw the teams using the Kinect I couldn't tell if they were doing anything effective. You might as well clown around with it.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

I've only seen a team use it once every 3-5 matches on the webfeeds I've been watching.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We gave serious thought to juggling balls. But then figured that the balls would be ruled illegal.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Yeah refs are trained to not have a sense of humor about things like that.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

This thought actually crossed my mind after Kettering. :D

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We use the kinect on the robot for it's infrared camera.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

There is so much strategic potential with the Kinect that isn't really being utilized. A lot of teams are either using it as the only method of controlling their robots or don't use it, which is a little silly.

HOT's paper explains that they use the Kinect as a safety override. That is a great use.

Say you miss shot 1 - use the Kinect to adjust for shot 2. Maybe you are trying to go to the middle bridge, and someone beat you to it - use the Kinect to cancel and drive to where you want to start teleop instead of breaking your manipulator or whatever.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Team 23 was the only team to use the Kinect at the WPI regional.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Only one team legitimately used it once, however 79 Krunch realized about halfway through Orlando that it was a great opportunity to have someone dance through the first 15 seconds for the rest of their games :P

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

1540 and 2443 both used it in Oregon. 1540 was first pick by the 1 seed and used it to time when they would drive toward the bridge. If they got beat to it they would just stop and not risk driving under the bridge and ensuring it rolled any leftover balls off the bridge. I'm not positive what 2443 used it for but they were still using it all the way through the finals.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

I think the atom probably is a bigger issue [/atom hate]. :p
I know that the cable FIRST is using is designed specifically for the Kinect with a powered repeater, so that would explain why the hub didn't work for you. Sorry you had so many issues though!

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

It seems to me like the Kinect was never a very good idea. Not only does it not allow for precise control, but it is probably worse than a good autonomous program. Was there a similar lack of enthusiasm for 2008's remote control thingy that could be used during autonomous?

Our team isn't currently using the Kinect. We considered doing a "shoot now" type of thing, so we didn't overlap with other robots shooting. I like HOT's idea, but part of me believes that trying to correct a first missed shot using the Kinect would only result in a second air ball.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

The difference with 2008 was that the randomizer determined where balls would be for a match after robot placement. There is a "similar" (but not very) aspect here with the timings of your alliance partner's shots, but an adjustable autonomous routine and communication pre-match can resolve most of those problems.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

The 2008 IR remote was very important for one reason: The Randomizer. Game pieces were put in random locations prior to each match, and the IR remote was a way to tell your robot where they were.

Rebound Rumble has no equivalent aspect of randomness. Sure, you might get beat to the bridge, or the balls might be placed slightly different on the bridge, but imagine if there were 2 more "wildcard" balls that were placed somewhere on the floor pre-match. THAT would have been a strong incentive to use the Kinect.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Here is a copy of my post on this from another thread (which references another thread discussing the same thing...)

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Well, when we actually attempted to use the kinect, we used a dual core laptop, which kept up fine.

I'm still quite suspicious that it was a cabling problem. I don't recall reading hearing about a repeater; I thought Microsoft simply tested with the cable length first used and gave them the nod for using it.
We were able to drive it around for about 5 minutes in our build area, and we had what seemed to be much better control.

Has anybody else using the kinect observed similar issues to mine?

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

I would agree with your suspicions. In practice the classmate yielded delayed results for our team, but using a more powerful laptop greatly increased the response time. It will be interesting to see if this holds true on a real competition field.

4096 plans to use the Kinect at the Midwest Regional next week.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Dj,

Personally, I would be much more suspicious of the physical environment than of the cabling. The Kinect is fairly free to move around inside that black box that it is housed in, especially as robots collide with the field. It is also pretty easy to ratchet the Kinect servo so it is tilted up or down instead of straight ahead.

If you plan to continue trying to use the Kinect at your next event, have your Kinect operator make sure the Kinect is centered, pulled out towards the edge of the box (so the box does not block any of the image) and level.

If your laptop can handle it without trouble, you may want to run the Kinect Server in debug mode (the shortcut is in the FRC Kinect Server folder) to verify what the Kinect is seeing at the start of each match. If you need the screen real estate you can hide the debug mode window behind your dashboard after verifying that the Kinect is positioned properly.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We are definetly planning on using it this weekend at GVSU.

->5-speed shooter control-right arm (0,.2785,.35,.59,1) and conveyor operation-left arm (off-off, on-off, on-on).
->Last but not least, Pretty Light control w/ Head buttons!

We tested it yesterday and it works like it should! But we can also operate w/ old boken timing code from Gull Lake by flipping z-throttle on joystick before match begins.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Excellent application. Good luck.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Easily the *best* use of the Kinect station this year...
:rolleyes:

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We use ours. For the first ~7 seconds, its preprogrammed shooting. Then control is givin to our kinect driver and our ball collector is turned on. Our kinect driver drives around for the remainder of hybrid trying to collect balls.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

So yes our Kinect code works perfectly in the shop......

But when we use the exact same DS w/ exact same USB hub we are unable to get the Field Kinect to work w/ the DS at all. This is @ GVSU/West Michigan. Anyone else have similar issues?

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

The problem is probably the hub. I'd imagine that extension cable may not play nicely with some USB hubs.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We're at GVSU this weekend, we had the exact same issue in Traverse City with the USB hub. I would recommend hooking directly into the computer with it.

If your still experimenting with it, feel free to hunt me down (team 2474 :D ) just ask for the programmer (or Joe). I'd kinda like to see it working in any scenario, and to see if you see similar results (see my other post in this thread).

I'd love to pair up and work on it if you think you'll be spending some time on it tomorrow! :] (as long as I'm not too busy with our robot)

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

We are using a Kinect (IR imaging) with some success. We do not use its auto-ranging feature, rather, we process the image. We have good accuracy on the practice field, but we are experimenting with software and IR illumination adjustments to get better consistency on the game field. We suspect that the field lighting and reflections from the backboards and possibly the floor, other robots, or the big projection screen are causing the Kinect system to "lose lock" on the targets at times. Our test field used plywood for the backboards. We did not get to calibrate to the lighting in Rochester, hopefully we can in DC.

We are using an Arm/Linux Beagle Board-xM and a CV image processing library, in addition to some custom image processing code developed by the students. It does take a long time to boot... The USB Kinect plugs into the Beagle Board, and the Beagle is on the local Ethernet. Code by one of our students does the trig on the vertices of the trapezoids to calculate the angle and distance to the target, which is passed to the cRIO over a UDP packet link developed by another student. When the "aim" trigger is pulled, the steering loop is closed around the error signal from the Beagle (in discrete slow steps due to current 6 frames-per-second data rate) until it reaches the "dead-band" near zero error. The students developed a LOT of software over 6-weeks.

On the test field we can range and aim at the center target with 0.5 degree accuracy with any 3 of the 4 targets visible, tested to about 20 feet. We did not have sufficient time at the Rochester regional to collect enough distance calibration data points, so the curve we are currently using is not so good, based on only 5 points. This was due to time spent fixing mechanical problems. We hope the shooting will work better on the field at the Washington DC regional, and that we'll have enough time to properly calibrate there :).

We also have a device that "squeezes" the ball to identify soft balls on the way in, but we haven't tried it. If things go well, we may use a different distance-to-shooter-speed curve for soft balls, or apply some other correction, but that is asking a lot...

We'd be happy to talk with anyone using the Kinect, and offer help if we can.

--Dan Sternglass

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Team 840 is considering using a similar strategy. Because we have a reliable 12-point autonomous, we're keeping the first half of hybrid, then handing it over to the Kinect driver for zooming backwards and lowering the coopertition bridge. Though we experienced some lag or issues our last trial, hopefully we can get it working at the practice matches at SVR.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

987 is using the Kinect's IR imaging on the robot for distance. So far it has worked quite well. We also use the field kinect as an Emergency stop during autonomous.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

At the NY Regional, I don't remember seeing any teams using the Kinect. One team I talked to said they had used it successfully at another regional (Long Island?), but that it wasn't working on the NY field.

Our team found a use for the Kinect, although it probably isn't what this thread was meant for. We set up a cool demo in our pit where you could manipulate a 3D model of our bot on a projector just using hand gestures, Minority Report-style. Another team was using the Kinect to play a xylophone. If there's any interest in our Kinect-CAD project, I'm sure I could find a video somewhere.

Re: Kinect usage at competitions
 

Our team had the xylophone demo set up. We used it at Rutgers/MAR last week, but to our disappointment it was unusable at NYC. It was not set up properly, and field personnel kept walking in front of us, so we gave up.