Microsoft Kinect: infrared depth maps for dewarping?

[rob]

Wow, that's actually a somewhat usable depth map. It's kinda jaggedy, but I suppose that averaging multiple slices would help. Can you try that and see what happens?

[daniel_reetz]

Yeah, I will, but you can, too -- all the data I have are in those screenshots.

I'm going to start seriously analyzing the Kinect over the next few days, including explaining the tech in some serious detail. As a part of that, I will sample a bunch of books and try to provide you with some better data.

[rob]

OK, great. Sorry I haven't been very responsive recently -- flights and work keep me away...

[daniel_reetz]

No problem, Rob. I'm also planning on getting you that Sharp sensor data we talked about. Just have to find my Arduino in this mess.

So, I posted a camera modification guide with some new images if anyone is interested... more Kinect data coming soon.

http://www.futurepicture.org/?p=97

[spamsickle]

Science Friday has a segment on the Kinect this week. I left a link on their website back to this thread: http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201011196.

[vitorio]

I picked up a Kinect, and have been watching the developers on Freenode #openkinect. Haven't gotten further than just testing it with my person, not even with a book yet.

[daniel_reetz]

Cool!

I could use some help on the next plan. I'd like to save out the 11 bit depth data as a TIFF or maybe even some other kind of file- -rather than mapping it to colors, I just want the numbers directly. If you can help collect that data, it will help both me and Rob to make a little progress on dewarping. I'm working on another scanner this weekend and so I can't pay much attention to the Kinect for a few days.

What OS are you on?

[vitorio]

Windows XP 32-bit, but it looks like the Kinect can be recognized from inside a VM as well, and I have Linux VMs handy, although I've only tried it on Windows so far.

[daniel_reetz]

The Windows driver isn't far off, and it will be good to have a Windows guy on things. Rob is on Mac, I'm on Linux/Win, and you're on Win. Should be best of all three worlds. For book scanning we don't need the full frame rate of the Kinect, either.

[vitorio]

Am I doing this right?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/vitorio/depthtest1.png should be a false-color RGB depth image.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/vitorio/depthtest1.tiff should be a 16-bit greyscale TIFF of the 11-bit disparity data.

The format I came across for point clouds (PLY) wants a conversion to a real-world coordinate. The DEM format looks like I could do it without that, but maybe this is enough for tonight.