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Kinect + ROS = awesome SLAM solution!

Posted by Chris Anderson on November 13, 2010 at 9:17am

Now we're talking! As I Love Robots puts it, "This is the driver we have been looking for. The ability to the use the Kinect RGB-D Sensor with ROS is a complete game changer. 3D robotics is here and now hobbyists can afford a range finding sensor capable of implementing SLAM. Welcome to the future!"

SLAM stands for Simultaneous Location and Mapping, and it's the way to determine a robot's position in locations where GPS doesn't work, such as indoors. Who needs a $10,000 motion capture system when you can connect your Kinect to a laptop via ROS? Perfect for quadcopters and blimps...

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Comments

Ørjan Kvalheim Lønningen November 16, 2010 at 4:00am

Now this is getting interesting
Moderator

John Church November 14, 2010 at 7:49am

Another example of Kinect integration:
http://hackaday.com/2010/11/13/kinect-and-tisch-combined-for-multit...
Greg Fletcher November 13, 2010 at 11:14pm

How it works here
Leon November 13, 2010 at 10:47pm

This is impressive!
Does anybody know the principle of measurement of this sensor? It seems to have 3 lenses...
Moderator

Roberto Navoni November 13, 2010 at 2:55pm

In my professional application I used PointGrey labs stereo camera .. It working goods the result is simila of Microsoft Kinetc
madhuran wilson November 13, 2010 at 2:52pm

yes this is a better solution than having laser range finders for slam, or at least object avoidance. looking forward to implementing this on a Quad
Moderator

Roberto Navoni November 13, 2010 at 2:32pm

I buy my kinect today .. it's incredible ... I think that is possible to use it for 3d indoor navigation .
Regards
Roberto
ionut November 13, 2010 at 1:31pm

In other words you can use this 3d camera to create a map of your surroundings.Once you have the complete 3d model of the area it will be a walk in the park to precompute your path.In theory :)
pixhawk November 13, 2010 at 12:30pm

The disparity resolution depends however on the baseline and resolution of the imager. If the cameras are fixed on the Kinect PCB, then it might be a little hard to use for MAVs, except for indoor flight (we'll definitely try it out, with the direct driver).
Developer

James Goppert November 13, 2010 at 10:46am

Wow! This will be great for my research. We've been using a dual webcam rig but this looks amazing and it's in hardware! Nice!