MICROSOFT KINECT FOR ROBOTIC APPLICATIONS

In the last few days Kinect, a product developed by Microsoft and oriented to the gaming industry, has been making quite an impression in the robotic world. 

This device was announced by Microsoft as the gadget that would change the history of the gaming industry. Well, I don't know if that would be true. Only time will tell. But, on the way, they created a tool with practically endless possibilities for robotic applications. I wonder if Microsoft saw it coming...

But, what makes it so appealing for robotics?

The device offers a RGB camera and an IR camera with a frame size of 640x480 pixels and a frame rate of 30FPS. But the really interesting feature is its  Depth camera. This depth camera enables to build a 3D view of the environment surrounding the Kinect, which allows many applications in robotics. 

Here is an example:

Another very interesting fact is its price: around $199. The price of other similar sensors is at least 10 times more expensive, for example the price of a Point Grey Bumblebee2 stereo camera is around $1900. Not everyone can afford to spend almost $2000 in a sensor, but almost every hobbyist can buy a Kinect (and when you get tired of playing with your robot you can use it to play with XBOX too :P)

Of course, a lot of people quickly realized the immense potential of this device and several initiatives appeared to build an Open Source driver that enabled people to use Kinect on a PC.  Being OpenKinect one of the most active projects at the moment.

Recently, the people at ROS (Robot Operating System) integrated OpenKinect on his system and as a result now anyone using ROS can easily take advantage of Kinect:

As long as Kinect is a device engineered to be used on indoor environments its behavior on outdoor environments can be predictably poor. And as you can see on the experiment carried out by the researchers at  Meiji University's AMSL Racing group the results outdoors in a sunny environment is quite poor, but the result in a shady environment is not too bad, though.

If I were Microsoft I would integrate Kinect into Microsoft Robotic Developer Studio right away.