Hector Martin's libfreenect open-source driver for the Microsoft Kinect has lead to several efforts within the ROS community to create Kinect drivers for ROS. Stéphane Magnenat (ETH Zurich) and Alex Trevor were the to port libfreenect to ROS. The CCNY Robotics Lab has now added their kinect_node package, which adds documentation, depth calibration, and example bag files. It's great to see how their efforts have contributed to each other, as well as to the broader libfreenect community.
The Kinect is obviously an important sensor for robotics. It's a sensor that we can all own at home, instead of having to share in a lab. That has already has enabled so many people to quickly work together on an open-source driver and it will be great to see what the community can build together next.
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