Using MS Kinect (360 version) IR sensor in vision tools

[rbergs]

This seems rather simple, but for the life of me I cannot find examples of how to do this.

I have a MS Kinect which is the 360 version, but I have it working on my PC.  It works with the libraries and SDK from MS without a problem.

What I want to do is use the IR sensor data to make an object tracking code that is almost light independent (obviously, it needs the IR, but room light levels will not bother it).

From playing with the SDK, the principle of what I want to do should work:  take the IR image, apply standard vision tools such as edge finders and measurements, and life should be good.

However, I for the life of me cannot figure out how to get this stream into Labview.  Color only will not work because I do not / cannot have structured lighting, meaning the color of the object will change with lighting and shadows (I have a version that 'works' with a web cam through Labview, but it has to be just right).  The depth view does not give sufficient data to pick out what I am looking for.

My idea is to essentially give the objects I want to track something to make them stand out (although I might not need to), so that I can track them.  In crude testing, as-is I can see them with the IR image just fine without anything special.

When I go into the vision assistant, it is not recognized as even being there.  I understand that this is because it installs as something weird in Windows.

There are a few examples of how to communicate with it, but I haven't been able to find anything specific to the IR side.

[brunost]

Have you tried Kinesthesia Toolkit for Microsoft Kinect? I have never tried it with the 360 version and I don't know if the IR-stream is implemented, but at least it will give you a good example on how to use the .NET SubVIs to acess the Kinect. If that works, it shouldn't be much of a problem to access the IR-stream.

[Klemen]

Hello,

I have extensively used Kinect in Labview using OpenNI/PCL. As far as I am aware, no IR data can be acquired using these libraries.

I think you can extract the IR stream by using "libfreenect" based wrapper:

https://github.com/RyanGordon/libfreenect/tree/unstable/wrappers/labview

Best regards,

K

P.S. You cannot get IR and RGB image simultaneously.

[rbergs]

Thank you, I'll take a look.

I do not need the RGB image.

I have a version of this that 'works' with a web camera, but it needs to be under very controlled conditions.  The trick to this is that I cannot assume I will have these conditions going forward.

The theory is that using the IR emitter and IR sensor it would be more like radar, of sorts.  I was able to get this to work once and I could see what I wanted to track fairly well, but the background was not visibile.

Many of the examples I have found use the RGB or the skeleton stuff, but neither help me.