[steve_k]

The problem that I see with the real-sense is that just like the Kinect it's based on structured light. This means that it will only work indoors (just like the Kinect). So their cool demo with putting that on a drone is kind of pointless, because who flies a drone indoors?

There are now some devices available which can provide depth data through passive stereo vision. I have recently seen this one in action: http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/

The problem with that, however, is that it is targeted at industrial market and probably way to expensive for any ordinary consumers. I guess we will still have to wait for some major revolution in depth sensing.

[netinstructions]

> because who flies a drone indoors?

I fly my 35 grams drone[1] indoors all the time in my apartment. Granted, it would be bigger and heavier with an Intel real-sense processor and camera on it, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities.

[1] http://flitetest.com/articles/hubsan-x4-review

[reaktor]

Heh - RealSense is not exactly one depth camera. This particular formfactor uses active stereo IR (R200 camera), so it also works outside but loses the projective texturing (where it's usually not needed anyway).

[steve_k]

Actually, I don't think so. Its kind of hard to get any technical information on the real sense and I know that Intel is making different versions of it, so please correct me if I'm wrong and if they have one which really does stereo. On http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tech... they say the following:

"The Intel® RealSense™ Camera F200 is actually three cameras in one—a 1080p HD camera, an infrared camera, and an infrared laser projector"

So this is just looks like the first Kinect. The infrared camera will observe the projected pattern and the RGB camera is there to capture the color information. You can't really match an infrared image (which is also covered with a laser pattern) with a visible light image, as they will look very different. So you would require a yet another camera (infrared or visible light) in order to do stereo.

[reaktor]

The robot is using the R200, an active stereo camera, not the F200. Even the F200 uses a fundamentally different technique (coded light, projected grey code) rather than structured light as the Kinect uses.

Source: I work as a computer vision engineer on these products for Intel RealSense.