Kinect-- Use it as a sensor on the robot??

Hello everyone,
So my team members were recently considering using the Kinect sensor as a camera-like sensor on the robot instead of at the driver’s station, because it has capability of measuring distance and depth. We figured this would be a good strategy for accurately shooting frisbees at the goals. The problem is, we have no clue how… :confused:

If anyone knows of ways to “hack” the Kinect sensor into using it as a depth camera-kind-of-thing, or how to program it to do so using LabView and SDK, some assistance in those matters would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you! :smiley:

An idea our team floated around was the possibility of using an onboard processor w/ a usb hub in order to use the kinect. In any event, you need a usb interface to use the kinect, in addition to some drivers that are limited to windows (although I may have misheard that).

Power supply would be a problem too

ok, I will keep those things in mind and continue to think about it… thanks for your help though. :]

Can u tell me if u get it to work

It has been made to work (see 987 last year). However, unless you have a really good reason to use the Kinect, I would recommend against it. It is quite complicated to set up and integrate into the robot’s systems. The time spent getting it to work could probably be better spent making a simpler system work really well

This is my teams first year and we couldn’t get a network camera but we might have a kinect that we can use unless u know of something else we could get

And thank you:D

I guess I posted that code in the wrong forum… See my post here. It has code already written to do most of what needs to be done. It’s poorly documented (no time to fix write now) but contains a working program to run a kinect. It’s made for Linux.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1205226#post1205226

987 posted one way to power the kinect from the robot. We’re working on an alternate solution.

Hm… In previous years, we kept getting Axis cameras. It appears it’s not in the KoP this year and is sold out on AndyMark. It costs about $150-200.