Kinect as robot camera and some other questions

[normaldude8825]

I am this year's programmer of the team I am part of, and I am interested if the team were to implement the Kinect as the robot's camera if there is some already existing files for FRC that can be use just like the one for controlling the robot. Also if the Kinect part has to be with C++ (which I highly think so) or if it is possible with Java.The third question related to this would be if the part of the Kinect is in C++ and the rest in Java. To conclude I am new with programming (at the moment learning Java, and took a class of introduction to C++) and I was told there was a pre-built robot source code I could use and then modify, if there is where could I find it?

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by normaldude8825

I am this year's programmer of the team I am part of, and I am interested if the team were to implement the Kinect as the robot's camera if there is some already existing files for FRC that can be use just like the one for controlling the robot. Also if the Kinect part has to be with C++ (which I highly think so) or if it is possible with Java.The third question related to this would be if the part of the Kinect is in C++ and the rest in Java. To conclude I am new with programming (at the moment learning Java, and took a class of introduction to C++) and I was told there was a pre-built robot source code I could use and then modify, if there is where could I find it?

Since the Kinect is USB-only, your team would have to buy a secondary processing board such as the Ras. Pi or Pandaboard to pick up the images and send them over ethernet. It's doable, but it requires a lot more work and probably isn't worth it if you're only using the Kinect's camera.

[normaldude8825]

Thank you with the replay, could you tell me if there is a pre-existing code for the robot, and if so, where could I find it?

[Johnbot]

This should help, its a very nice paper courtesy of 987.

www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/download/3456

[smclean1969]

We used the Kinect as our camera last year and it took a lot of extra work to make it happen. As mentioned, we needed an on board processor that preprocessed the imagery and then sent it to the driver's station. There was a lot of custom code but when it was done, it worked well. The kit of parts camera, though, was used by three of the top five teams on the Newton field in St Louis last year. If it worked for them, then it's probably good enough for almost everyone.

[Sanchez_Man]

We tried to do Kinect on the robot using java last year. We found that it could be done using the OpenKinect Libraries as well as Processing. Unfortunately, it only works on Mac OSX (We tried for a week to get it to work on linux). We eventually tried to run Macintosh on a cheap netbook, but despite that fact that the netbook was touted as being "Hackintosh" compatible, it wasn't.

I know of one team that got it to work. They used Microsoft's Kinect SDK and used UDP to send packets between an onboard computer and the cRIO via an ethernet cable.