The long-term goal driving my robotics investigations is to build something that has an awareness of its environment, and intelligently plan actions within it. (This is a goal shared by many other members of RSSC as well.) Building Phoebe gave me an introduction to ROS running in two dimensions, and now I have ambition to graduate to three. A robot working in three dimensions need a sensor that works in three dimensions, so where I'm going to start.

Phoebe started with a 2D laser scanner purchased off eBay that I learned to get up and running in ROS. Similarly, the cheapest 3D sensor that can be put on a ROS robot are repurposed Kinect sensor bars from Xbox game consoles. Even better, since I've been a Xbox gamer (more specifically a Halo and Forza gamer) I don't need to visit eBay. I have my own Kinect to draft into this project. In fact, I have more than one: I have both the first generation Kinect sensor accessory for Xbox 360, and the second generation that was released alongside Xbox One.

xbox 360 kinect and xbox one kinect

The newer Xbox One Kinect is a superior sensor with a wider field of view, higher resolution, and better precision. But that doesn't necessarily make it the best choice to start off with, because hardware capability is only part of the story.

When the Xbox 360 Kinect was launched, it was a completely novel new device offering depth sensing at a fraction of the price of existing depth sensors. There was a lot of enthusiasm both in the context of video gaming and hacking them to be used outside of Xbox 360 games. Unfortunately, the breathless hype wrote checks that the reality of a low-cost depth camera couldn't quite cash. By the time Xbox One launched with an updated Kinect, interest had waned and far fewer open source projects aimed to work with a second generation Kinect.

The superior capabilities of the second generation sensor bar also brought downsides: it required more data bandwidth and hence a move to USB 3.0. At the time, USB 3.0 ecosystem was still maturing and new Kinect had problems working with certain USB 3.0 implementations. Even if the data could get into a computer, the sheer amount of it placed more demands on processing code. When coupled with reduced public interest, it meant software support for the second generation Kinect is less robust. A web search found a lot of people who encountered problems trying to get their second generation bar to work.

In the interest of learning the ropes and getting an introduction to the world of 3D sensing, I decided a larger and more stable software base is more interesting than raw hardware capabilities. I'll use the first generation Xbox 360 Kinect sensor bar to climb the learning curve of building a three-dimensional solution in ROS. Once that is up and running, I can try to tame the more finicky second generation Kinect.