Dear ROS users and roboticists,

We (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH) are about to develop an 
open Visual-Inertial low-cost camera system for robotics. The goal is a 
standard piece of hardware that combines a monocular/stereo/multi camera 
and inertial sensors (an IMU) providing synchronized, calibrated data in 
ROS.

Such a piece of hardware could allow the community to focus more on the 
development of novel algorithms and less on hardware and integration 
issues. Our hope is that this will motivate young PhD students and 
researchers around the world to make their VSLAM frameworks ROS 
compatible, ultimately leading to 'plug and play VSLAM for everyone'.

The system will be based on the latest generation of XILINX FPGAs 
(Artix/Kintex-7 / Zynq, that's fixed) as well as a user programmable CPU 
and provide at least a GigE port. We target real-time, low-power 
processing, and the user should have access to raw data as well as 
pre-processed information such as features and flow fields etc.

We would like to invite you to give us feedback an thereby influence the 
design of our system. We are extremely happy about any feedback you can 
provide, more general feedback is as welcome as technicalities such as:

- Cameras (number, configuration, resolution, HDR, global shutter, lens 
type, etc.)
- General specs such as weight, size, power consumption, etc.
- Inertial sensor grade
- Interface to the host, API, etc.
- On-camera features (feature detection, dense optical flow, dense 
stereo, etc.)

Many thanks and best regards,
ETH - CVG
ETH - ASL