kinect

kinect is a ROS package that provides nodes to acquire information from a Microsoft Kinect device.

How to install

Dependencies from sources

Dependencies handling is based on the wstool tool. Run the following instructions:

$ sudo apt-get install python-wstool
$ roscd ; cd src
$ wstool init
$ wstool merge `rospack find kinect`/dependencies.rosinstall
$ wstool update

Dependencies included in the Ubuntu packages

Please run the rosdep utility:

$ sudo apt-get install python-rosdep
$ sudo rosdep init
$ rosdep install kinect --ignore-src

Build package with Catkin

$ catkin_make --only-pkg-with-deps kinect

Drivers

There are four drivers (primitives) that can be used with the Kinect.

• the freenect driver

  • It is open source
  • It does not consume a lot

• the pure openni 1 driver, integrated in ROS

  • It gives you the RGB and the depth image, but not the user mask.
  • It is open source
  • It does not consume a lot

• the pure openni 2 driver, integrated in ROS

  • very similar to OpenNI1

• the [OpenNI+NITE](http://www.openni.org/files/nite/ NITE page]) driver

  • It gives you the RGB and the depth image, and the user map (that is a nice feature!)
  • It also publishes the skeleton, both as a set of ROS TF transforms (http://wiki.ros.org/tf ROS TF page]) and a NiteSkeletonList custom message (https://163.117.150.59/browser/repoAD/projects/devices/kinect/unstable_ros/msg/NiteSkeletonList.msg msg file])
  • It is closed source (at least the low level NITE engine)
  • It does not consume a lot

Which should I need?

It depends what you need. If you need the user map, go for NITE. Otherwise, use the freenect/openni one.

What topics do they supply?

They offer a unified interface:

• /<robot>/rgb [sensor_msgs/Image]
• /<robot>/depth [sensor_msgs/Image]
• /<robot>/user [sensor_msgs/Image] (only for NITE)
• /<robot>/skeletons [kinect/NiteSkeletonList] (only for NITE)
• /<robot>/cur_tilt_angle [std_msgs/Float64]
• /tf [tf/tfMessage]

Code API

Cf class NitePrimitiveClass and both implementations nite_primitive_standalone.cpp and nite_primitive.cpp

Licence

LGPL v3 (GNU Lesser General Public License version 3).