Multiple Kinects -- possible? Moving while capturing -- possible?

The most common question on the first video was: "Can you combine multiple Kinect devices to get a full 360 degree view?" Let me try to explain what I think.

Other, related questions: Can you use a mirror and a single device, or can you move one device to stitch together a complete 3D map of the environment? I'll try to tackle that as well

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Xbox
• Kinect
• 3D
• video
• Linux
• interference
• merging
• structured
• light
• open
• source

[martync1988]

This is fantastic, i'm curious to the audio delay, what is it that causes the processing delay?

[okreylos]

@martync1988 If you're referring to the non-lipsynched audio track, that's due to me not correcting for it during capture.

That said, latency of the 3D video is quite low. The Kinect delivers 30 images per second, so it has base latency of less than 30ms for internal processing, and a few ms to send a frame pair over USB. Then there are a few ms of unpacking and reconstruction time on the PC side, plus display latency. I'm estimating overall end-to-end latency in practice to be around 20ms.

[Anto0044]

This is so awesome! After you moved the view around, at 0:27, you are actually not looking into your camera, right? But since the angle is moved in the computer, it still looks like you do?? That's very confusing =P.

[okreylos]

@Anto0044 Good question, I don't recall. But judging by the direction of the "shadows," I am looking into a virtual camera that's maybe a foot off from the physical camera.

[alexutubeutube]

YES IT IS POSSIBLE,

see video on youtube:

"Real-time People detection and tracking with multiple Kinect cameras"

[okreylos]

@alexutubeutube Yes, we've known that for a few days now. Check "2 Kinects 1 Box", /watch?v=5-w7UXCAUJE

[gge5]

You're getting 100FPS from a single unit, right? So if you have four Kinects, 90 degrees from each other, can you not strobe each Kinect individually at 25 or 30 FPS? This way each Kinect is timed so that only one is active and projecting its pattern and capturing data, thus no interference. Because the results would be interpolated it may give funky results with fast motion, but overall I think it would work well.

[dailydols]

@okreylos This half-frame delay is nasty, and I consider it nearly impossible to compensate it in realtime. Really annoying...

[MrHack4never]

just wondering...

if the IR light disturb each other then why not use polarized light?

3D cinemas uses that technology and it works at least better than those R/B glasses.

oh and the glasses cost 1 $ each(or free if you go watch a 3D movie) so 2 $ for a set of 2 glasses that probably work better than using no lenses

[disconformist]

could you use multiple camera filters on the Ir emitter and camera to get a diode effect? a shift of just a few NM should suffice.

[theguymjp]

Why not put a porarising filter on the ir emitter of one of the kinects, to polarise the light, and then put a polarising filter on the camera lenses of the OTHER kinect so that it can't see the first kinect's ir light?

[abram730]

2 Kinects facing each other with polarizing filters.. no big problems with reflected light. Then do it with 4.. No strobe hack required..

You could ask Microsoft about a Kinect revision with this feature.

Why wouldn't they want to sell 4 per costumer?

Simple "Hey Microsoft do this and we will buy 4 Kinects each"

[mhoyer01]

Using multiple xbox kinects would be possible in a phased array configuration. Like he said, this would require additional hacking of the Xbox kinect. You would have to "chop" the signal so only one xbox kinect were on at a time. Ok internet, get to work!