Kinect v2 Preview(2)

Today, I will discuss about the basic properties of Kinect version 2.

Distance measuring method is changed from structured light pattern(Kinect v1) to
ToF(Time of Flight)(Kinect v2) as mentioned in previous post, several changes
can be detected in depth image of new Kinect.

First of all, there is no interference between multiple Kinects.
Previous version of Kinect use structured light pattern for depth measuring, so
if another kinect device is running simultaneously, holes are detected in overlapping area as below figure. White blobs in below depth image shows interference which has unknown depth value, and it is called as hole.

<Holes in depth image>

But, there is no interference between multiple devices using Kinect v2.
First image is the depth image when only single kinect is processing, and second one is the depth image when multiple devices are running.

<Single Sensor>

<Multiple Sensor>

You can see there is no difference between two depth image, so we can use multiple kinect w/o interference in Kinect v2.

You can also see the edge of depth image remains black, and I think that phenomena is the property of tof.

Another big change in Kinect v2 is infrared property.

In old Kinect, Kinect IR camera can sense out door and cannot measures depth in outdoor. But, using Kinect v2, it can operate in outdoor.

As above figure, with the ir sensor of each Kinect, we can see outdoor with Kinect v1 but cannot with Kinect v2. I think Kinect v2 uses there own frequency, so it cannot sense outdoor but with there own frequency, it can measure the depth in outdoor as below figure.

It is quite important change in new Kinect, and with longer working range in Kinect v2(up to 8m), various applications can be developed in outside.

This is all for second preview of Kinect version 2.

Next post will coming soon with more informative data.

Thank you for reading.

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Song, Wanbin

M.S. Candidate

Laboratory of Digital Image Processing

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Dongguk Univ. Seoul, Korea

Homepage   : http://dip.dongguk.edu

E-mail        : wbsong@dongguk.edu

                   me.wbsong@gmail.com

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Kinect v2 Preview(1)

Microsoft

The New Kinect is released.

In this blog, I'll introduce some information about New Kinect
which is Kinect v2, and share some codes with anyone who is interested in Computer vision.

The performance of Kinect v2 is improved remarkably comparing to the previous version.

First of all, measuring depth method is changed from structured light pattern to TOF(Time of Flight).
Therefore, the density of depth image is quite greater than previous one and the resolution of color image is also improved to FHD.

The detail specification is as following.

Resolution (pixel)

	Kinect v1	Kinect v2
Color	640x480	1920x1080
Depth	320x240	512x424

FOV (deg)

	Kinect v1	Kinect v2
Color	62x48.6	84.1x53.8
Depth	57.5x43.5	70.6x60

And the remarkable improvement is the number of people of skeletal tracking simultaneously.
In Kinect v1, only two people can tracked at the same time, but by Kinect v2, six people can be tracked.
And they additionally provide thumb tacking or end of hand tracking.
I'll discuss detail in few days.
Lastly, the working range is improved due to the method of measuring depth.
Using TOF method, the working range in Kinect v2 is 0.5m ~ 8m.

Up to here, I briefly mentioned about characteristics of Kinect v2.

From the next post, let's share some codes and practice some applications using Kinect SDK v2.

Thank you for reading.

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Song, Wanbin

M.S. Candidate

Laboratory of Digital Image Processing

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering

Dongguk Univ. Seoul, Korea

Homepage   : http://dip.dongguk.edu

E-mail        : wbsong@dongguk.edu

                   me.wbsong@gmail.com

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