Minimum Depth

[Toby Wilson]

Hello everyone.

I work for a company that produces machines for food & pharmaceutical production lines, and have been tasked with exploring possible applications of depth sensing technology. Needless to say there are A LOT, and the work is proving quite interesting.

Anyway, the only limitation I'm finding with the hardware in the tests that I'm performing (I'm using a Primesense PS1080 via Asus XTion PRO) is close-range performance; it doesn't seem to work at all for anything less than 60cm. My ideal working range would be 10cm-80cm to prove that the technology could be compactly integrated into existing machines.

Is there any way to overcome the minimum distance (not excluding physical changes to the hardware)?
Can anyone explain the physical reason for the minimum distance limitation?

Any comments appreciated,
Toby

[Longman]

The Primesense Sensor works with an infrared pattern created by an infrared emitter. The infrared camera analyzes what it captures and searches for the pattern. The differences in the emitted pattern and the pattern the camera detects indicate the depth on a certain position.

Now, if you come too close to the senser (< 0.5 meters for me), the reflected infrared pattern is so bright that the camera cannot regognize it any more. When you view the infrared camera stream from the kinect/asus you can see what i mean. If you are > 0.5 meters away you see a nice dot pattern, but come closer and it all becomes a white blur. So thats a hardware limitation that probably every infrared-based solution has. But i don't really know much more than this about it :P

[Rafael]

Hi,
look here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/01/20/near-mode-what-it-is-and-isn-t.aspx

Rafael

[TcBoY]

http://www.softkinetic.com/
15cm above
499usd, available now

http://www.leapmotion.com/
70usd
pre-order only, estimated launch = december 2012

kinect 4 windows = 40cm, 259usd??
kinect zoom = around 30usd
k4w+kinect zoom = around 30cm min, but the depth image become very
noisy especially at near distance
it is only useful for widening the viewing angle

[TcBoY]

http://www.pmdtec.com/

new camboard nano = 0 to 2m range
camcube 3.0 = 0.3 to 7m

but i think it is kinda expensive

[Stefan...@dlr.de]

Hi Toby,

I would strongly recommend to use a stereo camera system or a ToF-Camera, such as a SR4000 or a PMDNanoBoard, to perceive 3d data within a range of 0mm to 600mm. I have been working with these devices for some years in bin-picking and industrial vision scenarios.

Please keep in mind, that the Kinect-Sensor was basically developped for entertainment (toys) and the purpose of posture tracking. Moreover, if you take a closer look at the sensor data, you will see that the actual lateral resolution is far below the 640x480pix (even 320x240pix). There is a lot of filtering and interpolation coming along with the measurement principle and the algorithms running inside the Kinect sensor (region growing based correlation of a pattern with the current infrared image). For this reason you will not be able to perceive small structures, edges ...

Kind regards,

Stefan Fuchs.

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[Fredz]

Hi all,

pmdtec camcube cost around 6000€ (university prices...)

The camcube has a very nice housing ;) and it is as big as 2 kinect (without the base) axcluding the lens. For a distance of 80cm and with a resolution of 200*200 (the max resolution) it should be around 50 fps. Until know, i haven't time to test the depth data accuracy...

camboard nano is more or less 2000€

If you don't need 3D data, did you consider lidars, like Hokuyo witch are smaller.

Concerning physical reason for the minimum distance limitation, there is a good paper on the pmdtch website. (I can't find it know... i'll join it tomorrow)

Regards

[Stefan...@dlr.de]

Hi all,

my latest info (from a quotation) is the camboard nano costs about 800 Euros.

Kind regards,

Stefan.


_________________________________________________________
GermanAerospace Center (DLR)
Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics
82234 Wessling - GERMANY
_________________________________________________________

Dipl.-Ing. Dipl.-Betrw.(BA) Stefan Fuchs

Stefan...@dlr.de
Tel: ++49-8153/28-3500
Fax: ++49-8153/28-1134
http://www.dlr.de/rm/en/
________________________________________
Von: openn...@googlegroups.com [openn...@googlegroups.com]&quot; im Auftrag von &quot;Fredz [zann...@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Mai 2012 23:07
An: openn...@googlegroups.com
Cc: tobs...@gmail.com
Betreff: Re: [OpenNI-dev] Minimum Depth

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[Fredz]

Hi Toby,

The document I was talking about two days ago.

Stefan, your quotation for The CamBoard nano  was much better than the one I get in the beginning of this year ;)

Fred

[TcBoY]

I was getting a quote of 990 euro for the nano few days ago
so far the cheapest quote is the 800 euro by stefan

[Stefan...@dlr.de]

Hi,

990 Euros is right. I confused the quotation of 800 Euros with a different device. Sorry for this mistake. However, it is still below 3000 Euros, which was the quotation at the beginning of the year

Kind regards,

Stefan.
________________________________________
Von: openn...@googlegroups.com [openn...@googlegroups.com]&quot; im Auftrag von &quot;TcBoY [tcboy...@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 31. Mai 2012 15:34
An: OpenNI
Betreff: [OpenNI-dev] Re: Minimum Depth

I was getting a quote of 990 euro for the nano few days ago
so far the cheapest quote is the 800 euro by stefan

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[Dan]

There may be a short range PrimeSensor in the works. It's been
referenced in the MSR OmniTouch work, but I have no idea if/when it
will be commercialized.
http://www.engineeringontheedge.com/2011/10/a-touchscreen-anywhere-you-want-it/
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/omnitouch/omnitouch.pdf

For the immediate term, I'd concur that a ToF camera like the
DepthSense from SoftKinetic or the CamBoard Nano from PMD is the
solution for very close ranges.

dba

On May 31, 9:53 am, <Stefan.Fu...@dlr.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 990 Euros is right. I confused the quotation of 800 Euros with a different device.  Sorry for this mistake. However, it is still below 3000 Euros, which was the quotation at the beginning of the year
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Stefan.
> ________________________________________

> Von: openn...@googlegroups.com [openn...@googlegroups.com]&quot; im Auftrag von &quot;TcBoY [tcboy881...@gmail.com]