Developing a multitouch specific camera
Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:57 pm
Hello everyone,
My name is Justin Ireland. I am new to the forums here but I have known Jim for some time. We started talking a few months back about developing a multi touch specific camera. Point Grey Research cameras are currently a popular choice among the community because of their flexibility. The drawback is price. I think NaturalPoint has a great opportunity to take on this new market because the cameras are capable of doing much of the image processing on-board AND the cameras are slightly less expensive so theoretically you should get much better performance for about the same cost.
Camera based MT systems are essentially the same as a mocap system except you are only tracking 2D instead of 3D so in most cases you only need a single camera. In some cases it would be good to have multiple cameras such as for tracking a large area but 90% of the time one camera would suffice.
The major issues as I see it are: Adjusting for lighting conditions and data stream format for maximum compatibility. Touchlib seems to be the most promising open source solution but it needs some tweaking to work with different types of hardware. It was designed to work with typical usb or firewire webcams. My hope is that we could develop a solution based on the SLIM camera platform. Also, data output uses the TUIO protocol.
I'm getting some interest from the NUI community but I think it would work best to get some support from Natural Point. Together we can figure out both sides of the equation and meet somewhere in the middle.
If anyone is interested in helping with this let me know.
My name is Justin Ireland. I am new to the forums here but I have known Jim for some time. We started talking a few months back about developing a multi touch specific camera. Point Grey Research cameras are currently a popular choice among the community because of their flexibility. The drawback is price. I think NaturalPoint has a great opportunity to take on this new market because the cameras are capable of doing much of the image processing on-board AND the cameras are slightly less expensive so theoretically you should get much better performance for about the same cost.
Camera based MT systems are essentially the same as a mocap system except you are only tracking 2D instead of 3D so in most cases you only need a single camera. In some cases it would be good to have multiple cameras such as for tracking a large area but 90% of the time one camera would suffice.
The major issues as I see it are: Adjusting for lighting conditions and data stream format for maximum compatibility. Touchlib seems to be the most promising open source solution but it needs some tweaking to work with different types of hardware. It was designed to work with typical usb or firewire webcams. My hope is that we could develop a solution based on the SLIM camera platform. Also, data output uses the TUIO protocol.
I'm getting some interest from the NUI community but I think it would work best to get some support from Natural Point. Together we can figure out both sides of the equation and meet somewhere in the middle.
If anyone is interested in helping with this let me know.
