Programming for the Xbox Kinect™ sensor: tutorial presentation

摘要

The Kinect sensor was introduced in November 2010 by Microsoft as an accessory for the Xbox 360 video game system. Shortly after the product release, multiple software frameworks became available that allows a personal computer to capture output from a stand-alone Kinect [1,2]. The Kinect contains a RGB camera and a depth sensor utilizing an IR light source that allows the unit to output three dimensional positional data in real time. The Kinect data is organized as a stream of two 640 x 480 images acquired at a rate of 30 frames per second (fps). One of these is an ordinary 24-bit RGB video image. The other is an 11-bit depth image from which (x, y, z) positional data may be calculated. Students are well aware of the Kinect as an input device for the Xbox 360 system which makes it an ideal venue for student experimentation and independent study projects utilizing a personal computer platform. The tutorial presentation will provide attendees with detailed information on two of the available development environments for the Kinect: • OpenNI Framework - The OpenNI organization [1] is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications and middleware. Contributors to the framework include PrimeSense [3], the hardware developer of the Kinect and Willow Garage [4] who develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics. The OpenNI framework provides a rich set of utilities that can be used to access and process Kinect data using C++, C# and Java. • Microsoft Kinect SDK - Microsoft [2] has released a SDK which provides access to much of the functionality available to XBox developers. Applications may be developed in a Windows 7 environment using managed or unmanaged code in a .NET 2010 environment. In this tutorial we will present: • Hardware and software requirements for the two development environments. • Detailed instructions for downloading of device drivers, device middleware and associated libraries. • Hello World examples for checking the functionality of the Kinect unit. • An overview of the Kinect's capabilities including device resolution and limitations. • A summary of the library structure of both frameworks. • Several simple examples of the devices capabilities including player tracking the use of skeletal tracking. • A summary of research opportunities that are student accessible. • A demonstration of the Kinect software in action. All software and materials presented during the tutorial will be provided on the author's web site so that users may quickly get their Kinect applications up and running without significant configuration issues and start up problems.