[oswaldonfire]

Yep, the Kinect works - if you look closely, you can see how we put wax paper over the infrared laser projector, effectively blurring the light into a homogenous field and taking advantage of the kinect's infrared camera. When coupled with the retroreflective tape on the targets, it gives us a perfect tracking system completely immune to any changes visible light. The kinect is connected to an onboard computer, which does a huge amount of image processing to send a distance value (accurate to the inch) and information on how to move the turret (preliminary testing shows <1 degree accuracy) to the cRio.

In addition to running the Kinect, the onboard computer processes a feed from a second webcam which is pointed down at the field in front of the robot (not attached in this picture) and sends an augmented-reality video feed back to the driver station, highlighting the closest ball in green (or any other color) and overlaying information to help the driver line the robot up with the ball to pick it up.