610 explored the use of Kinect and an onboard netbook (running RoboRealm) during the build season. Here are a few highlights:
1. Infra-red beam is strong enough for it to guide our auto-aiming routines (full court and under the pyramid.) The programmers had it working beautifully during practice, and were pretty proud that our robot can auto-aim and shoot in the dark (full court!)
2. Unfortunately, in real competition, the other sources of infra-red lights in the Verizon Arena (BAE) rendered it unusable. The team reverted back to using it as a camera only for driving and manual aiming. We later removed the Kinect and Netbook to make room for our disc-pickup enhancement during Waterloo.
3. Overall, Kinect/Netbook/RoboRealm combo was very promising until we got into the BAE arena. The team may try it again if the new Kinect that comes with XBox ONE is more capable in filtering. RoboRealm is great and we received great support from the product guys.
Feel free to PM me if you need more details.