Potential impacts of Kinect on this years competition

[EricVanWyk]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Using a kinnect for advanced perception would be extremely innovative. I'd almost say it's a lock for winning awards at champs.

I agree with Adam. I just hope that those gigawatt rock'n'roll lights don't interfere with it.

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

I agree with Adam. I just hope that those gigawatt rock'n'roll lights don't interfere with it.

That is the reason why I changed my strategy for image processing. If you read my posts from before summer, I was suggesting a "projection" with a known image to be projected onto the field then process the image taken with a camera. I knew 1. it would probably be illegal and 2. the super mega lights will probably mess with the image projection. Something with the laser projection. That is when I "came up" with the rotating cameras idea. I honestly think that it would work just great as long as I get going with it. If it doesn't work, then I can do the stationary camera way. May be I can even use 3 cameras... who knows. My mind is just full of ideas I just need to put it into effect.


EDIT: Quick question, is the Kinect just using a IR led to shine up the place like a security camera does and use the intensity from the reflected photons to get the approximate range?

[mattiej]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

EDIT: Quick question, is the Kinect just using a IR led to shine up the place like a security camera does and use the intensity from the reflected photons to get the approximate range?

From what I understand (I haven't had much time to look it up) yes.The Kinect uses a combination of both IR and camera. It's an infrared receiver that registers near infrared light to not only get position, but also color and texture.

[PlatyPi Gunner]

There are some sharp programmers out there. I'm sure they could figure out compatibility and all that programming lingo that I have no clue about. I just thought I'd ask everyone's opinion since my friend and I, both ex-FIRST team members, saw a video of someone who essentially turned kinect into a helicopter and had it fly autonomously and thought that it could be incredibly helpful with several things in FRC. I reckon there will be a maximum of 3 robots that implement Kinect in this years competition

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by PlatyPi Gunner

There are some sharp programmers out there. I'm sure they could figure out compatibility and all that programming lingo that I have no clue about. I just thought I'd ask everyone's opinion since my friend and I, both ex-FIRST team members, saw a video of someone who essentially turned kinect into a helicopter and had it fly autonomously and thought that it could be incredibly helpful with several things in FRC. I reckon there will be a maximum of 3 robots that implement Kinect in this years competition

I agree that's it's awesome, unfortunately thus far in FIRST based on previous games, there is little point value incentive to do it. The autonomous tasks it could have solved were solved easier with less resources. Doesn't stop a team from doing it because it is cool however, or if the autonomous is something pretty different from the past.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by mattiej

From what I understand (I haven't had much time to look it up) yes.The Kinect uses a combination of both IR and camera. It's an infrared receiver that registers near infrared light to not only get position, but also color and texture.

The Kinect uses a depth finding approach called structured light. An IR laser is projected out as a pattern of dots (believed to be done with some type of diffraction grating). The scene is then viewed with an IR sensitive camera sensor. The method believed to be used to compute the depth from this image is a comparison with a stored reference pattern. Because of the spacing between the projector and camera changes in depth will shift the dots in the image relative to the reference pattern.

The RGB camera on the Kinect is seperate from the depth system and it is possible to stream data from one or the other or both. So far no method has been discovered to receive aligned RGB and depth images from the Kinect. All alignment being implemented is being done on the computer side, most commonly by calibrating using an approach similar to the standard checkerboard approach for camera calibration.