Thread: Running the Kinect on the Robot.
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Unread 05-01-2012, 08:06
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Jared Russell Jared Russell is offline
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Re: Running the Kinect on the Robot.
If parts utilization rules remain similar to how they have been in the recent past, you could conceivably use a Gumstix processor and breakout board to interface with the Kinect, and then communicate with the cRIO over an Ethernet connection (through the switch). Since the Gumstix runs a fairly full-featured version of Linux, you can use the openni driver to talk with the Kinect and get the RGB and/or depth images, and then send them over to the cRIO. I have heard that with the newer Gumstix, it is possible to do this in real-time with ~70% (Gumstix) CPU usage.

This route would require that you (a) figure out how to power the Kinect (feasible), (b) write an application for the Gumstix to use the openni driver to get the data of our choice and serialize it over ethernet, (c) write networking code on the cRIO side to receive your data, and (d) write image processing code to do something with it. It is definitely doable, but (c) and (d) would require careful attention to make sure you aren't overwhelming your cRIO. It would also cost you upwards of $400 for both the Gumstix and the desired I/O breakout board.