Happy to help where I can!

whats bad about kinect compare to laser is ,one its very big,cant work for most robot designs,second is draws over 1 amp,i think 1.5 amp at 12 volts,thats about 18 watts,second it hard to use as a navigation and a camera at the same time

on laser or LIDAR is the best for navigation only,small size and most draw under 500ma,like the NEATO LIDAR you can mostly get for about $150 about 4 inches square and one inch tall

seems like every sensors has its good and bad points

The power draw of the Kinect sensor is 12W (1A @12V)

For 12W you get a 3D sensor, a VGA camera and 4 microphones. The 12W includes the power needed for the integrated tilt motor which angles the device up and down. There is also a processor on board that cleans up the audio signals and handles echo cancellation.

3 i have draws 1.26 amps then drops to 1 .13 amp,but there is about 500 ma you forgot on the usb at 5 volts i have 3 of them at home,biggest drawback its very very long only it looks good on is the IROBOT ROOMBA the the turtlebot linux design is using somebody did a great teardown of the kinect,pelter element and laser draws the most on the LIDAR that NEATO XV-11 is using it draws 365 ma at 5 volts for microphone one of the best to use is the andrea scanning microphone i think it uses 4 but in a scanning motion design with a echo cancellation circuit

quality of the image sensor not that great ,its a vga sensor i like the small microsoft HD webcam witch has a much much higher quality,every thing now is HD

something you guys may or may not know about the KINECT it was hacked awhile back by someone and then latter on microsoft made a SDK for it i do hope DJ will make interface soon for it ,my ROOMBA project is waiting for it so far only linux has drivers and software for it,and i have other large robots i might use it on,wont work well on B9 OR OMNIBOT OR other small robots

Biggest issue with kinect is that you need a Windows PC to run it. Second problem, especially for me is that it does not work properly outdoors in sunlight. Comments ? Also once roborealm has a module for the Ez-ROBOT then it might be easy to use a kinect with their software. The greatest thing abou the kinect is sketal tracking and it can identify humans and gestures. Also, obviously the depth camera. It does not wotk closer then 2.5 feet so you need a safety sensor if you get too close.

another item bad about the KINECT is it only scans at 180 deg on the NEATO LIDAR it scans at 360 deg and i think it detects at about .5 inch

I've read somewhere that near mode could work a little bit shorter. Down to .4 meter (approx. 16"?). Each have their strength for a given application, of course. Lidar sensor cant do for the average hobbyist what windows Kinect can do right out of the box and Kinect cant do what a specialized lidar sensor does. Just a matter of which is best for you and what you want your bot to do.

there is a special lens you can get for the KINECT TO MAKE IT SHORTER but another item with KINECT you can detect people and objects at the same tim you are tracking that main reason you will never see it on professional robot design they use LIDAR mostly 2 things i dont like about the KINECT its not really made for the robots we make here ,because of th length stick out to far,and draws alot of wattage 12 watt for mail power and about another .4 watts on usb 5 volt power only thing i like to see if DJ gets it working i want to put on the only robot it will fit IROBOT ROOMBA or CREATE,any other robot it will look very odd or strange

both the KINECT and LIDAR still needs the code (api) made for it for the software you are using and both really works out of the box. LIDAR just needs a simple TTL to USB adapter,and there is a window code for it and linux PYTHON code

so mostly depends on the robot design ,large robot would use KINECT but cant do face tracking at the same time smalll or large would use the LIDAR (LIDAR IS ABOUT 3 " BY 3" BY ALMOST 2" HIGH) plus you cant see in back of the back witch is very need it for navigation

one of the main reason hobbyist didnt use the LIDAR before is because of the very high cost over $1000 ,on NEATO XV-11 LIDAR witch has about the same accuracy at $1000 unit its well under $150 for NEATO XV-11 LIDAR