[ros-users] Confirmation on primesense

[Nicolas Burrus]

Nicolas Burrus from Occipital here (we make Structure Sensor:
http://structure.io).  Structure Sensor is indeed currently based
around a few PrimeSense-designed components, but it is a new
electrical design with many new features, and we manage the
manufacturing ourselves.  Of course, PrimeSense components won’t be
available to us forever, but we have worked with PrimeSense to make
sure we have everything needed to keep shipping Structure Sensors and
meet current and future orders.  It is crucial to our own success that
we keep innovating and making sure Structure Sensors are available for
a long time. Components may change, but the mission is the same.

Even though a lot of our work goes into providing iOS compatibility,
we did a lot in the electrical design to make it work great on other
platforms (We even made a special USB cable for other platforms since
Apple uses Lightning).  We also made it robot-friendly by putting 4
screw holes on the bottom of the sensor, and providing CAD to help
people make attachments.  We also plan to release a PCL grabber for
Structure Sensor, and to have open source drivers (not OpenNI) for
Linux, Android, Windows, and OS X. If anyone wants to help out with
those open source efforts, let me know!

We will also make a fork of OpenNI2 and already have basic OpenNI2
support for the sensor when used with the USB cable.  (So, you can
already use Structure Sensor with existing apps using OpenNI2,
including ROS. However, we didn’t test on Linux yet, but it should
work.)  Long term, if OpenNI development remains active, we will keep
Structure working with OpenNI.  If not, then we will focus our efforts
more on Structure Sensor open source drivers instead.

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 7:52 PM, Arkapravo Bhaumik
<arkapravobhaumik at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks ! but this entire episode leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Subduing a
> glorious technology in order to fill their coffers.
> ᐧ
>
>
> On 27 February 2014 22:44, Piyush <piyushk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Xtions don't work with libfreenect (directly) or its ROS wrapper
>> freenect_camera. However, I believe openni_camera should continue to work
>> for the next 1-2 years, as long as the license for openni's existing
>> open-source code does not get changed.
>>
>> Piyush
>
>
> --
> Arkapravo Bhaumik
>
>
> http://mobotica.blogspot.in/p/head.html
>
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