Intel Perceptual SDK w/ $150 superpowered near-range Kinect

[zalo]

Intel is offering their Perceptual Computing SDK to go along with an amazing 320x240 60fps ToF camera (yes, real ToF!) that Intel, SoftKinetic, and Creative co-developed that you can buy for $150 TODAY. Tracking is optimal at less than 1 meter, and it can also get color and unmarred IR feeds simultaneously at 60fps, in addition to depth (making it perfect for eye tracking in normal use scenarios).

This thread is a good jumping off point for sample images and videos.

From what I can see, the leap and this device will be in direct competition. The leap has two key advantages over this sensor and other ToF solutions:

• It has double the FoV
• It costs half as much

This device will probably be better for head-mounting to the Oculus Rift because it can get some real point cloud data for good collisions, as opposed to the vague skeletal tracking information that the leap outputs. It's a shame that it's FoV is so limited though, it will only take up a small portion of the total Rift FoV. They also appear to be identical in terms of overall latency and farthest usable tracking distance.

[EdZ]

ToF camera

Great googly-moogly!

Not sure how well it can compete with the Leap (too little information on latency, tracking accuracy, etc), but that's going to be one heck of a machine vision camera! You can do some really fun things like looking through fog with them.

[zalo]

That's interesting! I didn't know that ToF sensors were immune to things like fog and venetian blinds.

By the way, the fog starts at around 23 minutes

[cybereality]

Wow! Things are really heating up!!!

[druidsbane]

Very very impressive. How soon can we get one similar to the one in the tech talk? That was mind-blowing

[brantlew]

Very cool. I definitely want to check it out when I get some free time.

[MSat]

Very cool!

I'm assuming that the Leap doesn't use ToF, so it should be able to support multiple units to cover an even larger field without interference (and probably use higher-res imagers for better sensitivity). Not only that, but the use of common sensors will probably keep it cheaper than ToF units for the foreseeable future.


Though for 3D mapping, these ToF systems probably can't be beat. I do wonder about their practicality for close-distance gesture tracking. It seems like a case of using a sledge hammer for what could be done with a regular hammer.