Author Archives: Christoph Heindl

About Christoph Heindl

I'm a professional software engineer working for PROFACTOR GmbH in Austria/Europe, the initiator of ReconstructMe and one of its main contributors. Reach me on LinkedIn.

Tracking Failure Detection and Recovery

9 Replies

Here are few words on a new feature we’ve added these days to our main development trunk: Tracking failure detection and recovery. Using that feature the system is capable of detecting various tracking failures and recover from that. Tracking failures occur, for example, when the user points the sensor in a direction that is not being covered by the volume currently reconstructed, or when the sensor is accelerated too fast. Once a tracking error is detected, the system switched to a safety position and requires the user to roughly align viewpoints. It automatically continues from the safety position when the viewpoints are aligned.

Here’s a short video demonstrating the feature at work.

We are considering to integrate this feature into the final beta phase, since stability of the system and its usability increase. Be warned, however there are still cases when the systems fails to track and fails to detect that the tracking was lost, causing the reconstruction to become messy.

ReconstructMe Team Replicated

2 Replies

Here’s a list of 3D replications printed by our keen beta testers. Sources are 360° depth streams of team members we posted here. In case you are about to print one of our team members, let me know, so I can update this post.

Derek, one of our enthusiastic users, has taken the time to replicate Martin’s stream using a 3D printer device. There is a write up about the making of on Derek’s blog. Check it out, it’s worth reading!

Here’s is his video capturing the printing sequence

Thanks a lot Derek!

Tony just dropped us a note that he successfully printed Christoph and uploaded the the results to thingiverse. Here is an image of the result

Thanks a lot Tony!

Bruce (3D Printing Systems) replicated all three of. His setup reminds me of bit of Mount Rushmore. Here’s the image

Thanks a lot Bruce!

3D Segmentation using ReconstructMe

21 Replies

Our (PROFACTOR) interest in ReconstructMe goes beyond reconstructing 3D models from raw sensor data. The video below shows how to use ReconstructMe to do a stable foreground/background segmentation in 3D. A technique that is often required in 3D vision for pre-processing purposes.

With ReconstructMe you can generate background knowledge by moving the sensor around and thus building a 3D model of the environment. Once you switch from build to track only, ReconstructMe can robustely detect foreground by comparing the environment with the current frame.

This technique can be used for various applications

  • Monitoring robotic workcells for human safety aspects.
  • Intelligent reconstruction of process relevant objects only. We definitely do a video on this one.

to name a few.

Asus Xtion PRO Live

5 Replies

Yesterday we’ve received a new Asus Xtion PRO Live device and at a first glance it looks really tiny compared to the Microsoft Xbox Kinect. It misses the engine for base tilt and does not need an external power supply. Lenses and hardware setup seems to be equal to Kinect setup, which allows us to use the same default calibration.

That said, we only needed to install the PrimeSense hardware binaries to get the ASUS device working in ReconstructMe.

Kinect for Windows – Near Mode

12 Replies

With the new Kinect for Windows to be shipped in February, Microsoft introduces the so called near-mode. There is a good write-up about it at the Microsoft blog. It seems as the hardware setup remains quite the same (lenses, base-offset), but the firmware changes. The near-mode can be activated through a software switch in the Kinect SDK.

I guess this all means that the OpenNI driver, which ReconstructMe is currently based on, won’t be able to switch the near-mode on and off in the near future. However, others have reported that under certain lighting conditions the Kinect is already capable of seeing objects as close as 400mm. A short in-house test revealed that valid z-depth values start as close as 405mm using XBox Kinect and OpenNI drivers.

I think that switching from OpenNI to KinectSDK won’t be a great benefit, as it would rule out other OpenNI compatible devices such as the ASUS Xtion PRO LIVE and would additionally bind ReconstructMe to the windows platform. Rather, we are considering to provide dual driver support.

Update 2012/03/22 As of today we use a dual driver model to support OpenNI and Kinect for Windows.

Beta Program Update

22 Replies

Hi folks,

we think it is a good idea to split the BETA program into multiple phases. Essentially, we will start with a naked ReconstructMe and add functionality incrementally as we move along. We think that doing it this way will allow us to break down bigger issues into manageable chunks, for which we can hopefully provide fast fixes.

If all goes well, we will end up, as promised, with a ‘full-blown’ ReconstructMe on 28th February. We will start to send out E-Mails to all participants on the 2nd of February. In case you haven’t received one by the 3rd of February, leave a reply below.

Any opinions or remarks?

In case you want to spread the word about ReconstructMe, please go ahead. We currently need as much as public attention as possible. We’ve already submitted links to a couple of platforms including Digg, Reddit, DZone, and Hacker News. Please upvote if you enjoy what we do.

Cheers,
Christoph