New Intel camera adds 6 degrees of freedom tracking

Intel has introduced a new addition to the Intel RealSense D400 series: the Intel RealSense Depth Camera D435i.

This latest camera includes a new inertial measurement unit (IMU) that enables developers to create solutions with more advanced depth-sensing and tracking capabilities for applications including drones, robotics and gaming.

The camera adds 6 degrees of freedom data from an internal IMU that combines a variety of linear accelerometers with gyroscopes to detect both rotation and translation for three axes, as well as pitch, yaw and roll.

For advanced scanning, the IMU provides an extra set of data allowing for dense reconstruction, and provides more reference so the camera doesn’t lose tracking. For example, in robotics, the robotics operating system provides not only vision but position data.

The camera runs on the open source Intel RealSense SDK 2.0, which now includes support for the IMU and enables fast, easy development across several programming languages so developers can quickly create prototypes to interact with real or virtual environments, says the company.

It provides an extra set of data for developers to create applications with more advanced depth-sensing and tracking in the same 90 mm x 25 mm x 25 mm form factor as the original Intel RealSense D435 Depth Camera.

The built-in IMU provides an additional data point for dense 3D model reconstructions and can be used in applications such as gaming, pointing devices and image stabilisation.

Additional use cases include:

Navigation and stabilisation for drones and other unmanned systems and robotics
Orientation for tracking in fitness and robotics
Motion detectors and gesture recognition for gaming and robotics
Rotational tracking for augmented reality and virtual reality head-mounted devices