How the Kinect Depth Sensor Works in 2 Minutes
Why Stack Overflow recommends it
Stack Overflow users link it when answering Kinect questions that need a quick, clear picture of how the infrared depth sensing works.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2013 to 2015.
What it is
A two-minute animated explainer from the CuriousInventor channel on how the original Kinect senses depth. It covers the cheap infrared projector and camera pairing and the structured light pattern, using triangulation to recover distance.
What people said
Recommends Johan Falk · 2013-12 · Stack Overflow · on “Kinect front light cause grip detection errors”
The Kinect sensor works using infrared light, which the IR rays in the sun will disturb (you can see this in the depth map when you have direct sunlight, see this link: [LINK] ), so unfortunately there isn't much you can do about it except trying to get rid of the sunlight. Here is another video of how the depth sensing works: [this video]
Recommends Vito Gentile · 2014-10 · Stack Overflow · on “Kinect Skeletal Tracking algorithm - basis”
For the original paper, supplemental materials and any other details about skeletal tracking algorithm , you can visit this page on Microsoft Research [LINK] . For a quick "how it works" about the depth sensing technology of Kinect (idea and patent by PrimeSense [LINK] ), I suggest you to see two videos: How the Kinect Depth Sensor Works in 2 Minutes [this video] , which should help you to understand the principle of structured lights, on which the depth sensing technology is based How Microsoft Kinect works with Infrared [LINK] (to see AFTER the previous video), in which you can see how the infrared pattern is actually projected in the scene by the depth sensor
Cites user3821361 · 2015-02 · Stack Overflow · on “Is the Kinect 2 Depth Sensor working in the same way as Kinect 1?”
it already says it in a title and weirdly enough, I'm unable to find information on this. The Kinect 1 used IR patterns to get depth data for the Kinect, which is shown here: [this video] There you had the problem that you couldn't combine overlapping images of two Kinects, because the IR fields wouldn't be distinguishable. This could be fixed by letting one Kinect shake, while the other on is still ( [LINK] ) Is that still the case for the Kinect 2 or did they change the way this works?