[gertlex]

There certainly hasn't been a consumer use case for these.

But the RealSense line are quite commonly seen on a wide variety of robots (maybe specifically those from US-based start-ups) over the past 8 years or so, at least from what I've seen.

[grumbelbart2]

There are some use-cases that Apple pioneered. After they bought Primesense, who made the first Kinect using quite interesting structured IR laser light points and a single camera to get depth, Apple shrank that technology. It is now the core of FaceID where it does a 3D scan of your face. On the backside of iPhones, Apple is using LIDAR to estimate depth, allowing improved computational photography.

Unfortunately it never caught on in other devices. I'd love a more secure face-id kind of thing in my Laptop (Apple, ThinkPad etc.) that authenticates me.

[gertlex]

Ahh yeah! That's true. I was solely thinking the realsense cameras and their general form factor not having consumer use.

Relatedly: A decade ago, where I worked, and around the time Primesense was getting bought (I think, without double checking), we bought about 250 Primesense cameras so we could build a bunch of robots with them before having to change what camera was used.