Hardware to use for 3D Depth Perception

Question

I am planning on giving a prebuilt robot 3D vision by integrating a 3D depth sensor such as a Kinect or Asus Xtion Pro. These are the only two that I have been able to find yet I would imagine that a lot more are being built or already exist.

Does anyone have any recommendations for hardware that I can use or which of these two is better for an open source project with integration to ROS (robot operating system).

Answer 1

I would vote for the Kinect for Windows over the Asus Xtion Pro based on the hardware (Kinect has better range), but depending on your project there's a chance neither will work out well for you. I'm not familiar with a Robot Operating System, but the Kinect will only run on Windows 7, kind of Windows 8, and supposedly Windows Server 2008. The Asus Xtion Pro seems to have SDKs available for Linux distros, so if your robot is running something similar it might work.

Depending on exactly what you need to be able to do, you might want to go with a much simpler depth sensor. For example, buy a handful of these and you'll still spend a lot less than you would for a Kinect. They might also be easier to integrate with your robot; hook them up to a microcontroller, plug the microcontroller into your robot through USB, and life should be easy. Or just plug them straight into your robot. I have no idea how such things work.

edit: I've spent too much time working with the Kinect SDK, I forgot there are third party SDKs available that might be able to run on whatever operating system you've got going. Still, it really depends. The Kinect has a better minimum depth, which seems important to me, but a worse FOV than the Xtion. If you just need the basics (is there a wall in front of me?) definitely go with the mini IR sensors which are available all over the web and probably at stores near you.