SO far so many websites of others trying with a camera has found it not working

BUT if you put up KINECT navigation in the search you will find many many hits

And major use in robot schools too.

bad items item about the kinect it takes a lot of power ,plus high cost, and it does have video drivers and SDK for windows 7

kinect window 7 drivers and SDK

I found it thanks EMMEUL its $75 for helicopter and $50 for plane type

little like the AR parrot drone,but at a lower cost

called Air Hogs Hawk Eye with vga camera,i dont know if good to map a room,but i buy at a another robot design to hack, #79 if i get it

My robots are going to run me out of my house and home.

I guess i am a SUPER ROBOT NERD,my girlfriend like the ROBOHOLIC better

Re-read what I said, the SDK works great but it is difficult to use the camera in the Kinect as a webcam and since nobody on the MSDN or any other Kinect groups are interested in making it work as a webcam "when it can do so much more" there is only one reliable driver which doesn't work with the latest SDK. Believe me, I've tried, my Kinect is connected to my HTPC for gesture control, that side works fine but Skype, Live Messenger, AmCAP, ARC etc. cannot use it a a webcam (the best you get is a still image of the Kinect logo which crashes after a few minutes).

YES i know nobody using it as a webcam ,it is used for NAVIGATION ONLY one reason i dont like it, but in ROBOREALM it can be used as a camera and navigation

i have 3 of them at home ,one on ROBOREALM and another on TURTLEBOT DESIGN using LINUX ROS

ROBOREALM shows a great webcam photo,

on ROS it working really good,some say its hard to use ROS but with the info on instaliing it and much more it was easy,plus with 3D MAPPING

KINECT main use is a gamming tool and gesture control,not really a webcam,and biggest use of it now is navigation.

look at the posts here on KINECT ,everyone waiting on DJ to finish the drivers for it

Wow there's a lot of crap to get through in this topic!..

Just spent the best part of 2 hours trying to write a clear, concise, well explained, well structured overview of the whole auto docking system... it's going to take almost as long to write that up as it will to build the thing!..

Have I missed anything from the sequence of events first? Monitor Battery Level Detect Low Battery Level Switch To Power Saving Mode Navigate To Charging Dock Engage With Charging Dock Energize Charging Circuits Monitor Charging Detect Fully Charged Battery De-Energize Charging Circuits Disengage From Charging Dock Return To Previous State

Having re-read this entire topic again today (really, don't try that while operating heavy machinery) it's damn near impossible to find the relevant information if someone was coming in to the discussion this far through or if someone was going to attempt to build the automatic charging dock in to their robot so basically what I am doing is listing out the sequence of events which will happen, use those as sub heading and cover each individual item as a separate entity. Where sections have more than one option available (such as navigating to the dock) these will be listed as options.

For instance,

Section 4 - Navigate to the charging dock. Section 4.1 - IR Beacon Method Section 4.1.1 - Waypoint Beacons Section 4.1.2 - Pololu IR Beacon Section 4.2 - Sound Beacon Method Section 4.3 - Coloured Waypoint Method Section 4.4 - QR Code Method Section 4.5 - Under Floor Inductance Method Section 4.6 - Line Following Method Section 4.7 - Distance Measuring Method

Section 5 - Engage with the charging dock. Section 5.1 - Glyph Method Section 5.2 - Laser Method Section 5.3 - Another Method...

etc. etc. etc.

I was tempted to start a new topic with only the confirmed working solutions posted however as it has taken so long to re-read it all and start writing it out in the sections as above so far I've only gotten part way through Section 2. Besides, we still have nothing confirmed for anything other than monitoring the battery level and it's sure to only cause confusion as to which topic to post in so one topic it shall remain for the time being.

Anyway, that's all I have to contribute to this topic tonight, giving thinking a bit of a break for today. If anyone else was giving re-writing it all in a clearer, better explained fashion please speak up and I'll be happy to share documents and share the task of re-writing it. On the flip side, I have no problems re-writing it all myself either.

Has anyone had any success with any of the navigation methods that have been posted yet? Wall measuring, pololu IR, beacons, waypoints?..

P.S. Does it show that one of the many tasks I have at work is writing technical documentation? More to the point, technical documentation written to be understood by technically minded consultants demanding extremely in depth explanations and details at the same time as writing for the layman in an understandable way...

Hi Rich,

Dont give up yet I applied a bit of thought to this and the basic problem is still the same effective navigation to a point close to the charging dock and then probably use a glyph symbol to do the final docking within say 2 metres. I know that this ('last mile' glyph dock) would would work as I have tested it with my Omnibot several times and even posted a vid on here.

The tricky bit is the more general navigation then I realised that instead of mounting some position sensor on the dumb side of the equation ie the robot connect it to the smarts ie the controlling PC/Laptop. If ARC could use another camera mounted high up which looks at where the robot is and maps this to a floor map pic it took earlier then the ultimate position of the bot could be determined and guided either around a room or to the capture point for a Glyph dock

Omnibot Glyph tracking

MOST likely others should write there own topic on navigation and home base finding idea.will make it very easy to find usefull info,like i have plan to do it in project showcase pretty soon .

THIS topic is so very long ,but does have some good ideas also

YOU ASKED about any success on pololu design i did, tested only the two together and they work today going to try using arduino and then EZB porting and codes

Will post my data as i make it,but i wounder what data is wanted I know video is the best,need to get one from my sister when EZB design is ready

my test robot will use is IROBOT roomba ,and not using its beacon only use pololu design

AFTER that is finish i have many others to design and test and put up

AS said before this type of topic is my biggest favorate or any on navigation or home base desegn,mostly i like to make the design alot better

LET me know if nobody understands any thing i write and can fix it,i here one or 2 cant understand it