CODEWITHSUNDEEP
kinect
Tamori
Tamori

Reputation: 97

Defining a tracking area for the Kinect

Is it possible to specify a (rectangular) area for skeleton tracking with the Kinect (using any of the available SDKs)? I want to make sure that only users inside that designated area are tracked and that the sensor is not distracted by people outside it. Think of a game zone, in which a player interacts with the Kinect and where bystanders outside of the zone should be ignored lest they confuse the sensor.

The reason I want this is that many times the Kinect "locks" onto someone or even something, whether it should or not, and then it's difficult for the sensor to track other individuals, who come into tracking range. I want to avoid that by defining this zone.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 328

Answers (1)

sonnyb
sonnyb

Reputation: 3514

It's not possible to specify a target area for the skeleton tracking with Microsoft's official SDKs, but there are some potential workarounds.

(Note that I'm not familiar with other SDKs for the Kinect, and note that I'm not sure if you are using the Kinect v1 or v2.)

If you are using the Kinect v1, note that it can track 6 players simultaneously (with a skeleton body position), but it can only provide full-body skeletal tracking for 2 players at a time. It's possible to specify which 2 players you want full skeletal tracking for in the official SDK, and you can do this based on which skeletons are in your target game zone.

If this isn't the problem, and the problem is that the Kinect (v1 or v2) has already detected 6 players and it can't detect a 7th individual that's in your game zone, then that is a more difficult problem. With the official SDK, you have no control over which 6 players are selected to be tracked. The sensor will lock onto the first 6 players it finds, so if a 7th player walks in, there is no simple way to lock onto that player.

However, there are some possible workarounds that involve resetting the sensor to clear all skeletons to re-select the 6 tracked skeletons (see the thread Skeleton tracking in crowds - Kinect v2):

Kinect body tracking is always scanning and finding candidate bodies to track. The body tracking only locks on when it detects head and shoulders of the person facing the camera. You could do something like look for stable blob points in the target area and if there isn't a tracked body, reset the Kinect Monitor service.

The SDK is resilient to this type of failure of the runtime, but it is a hard approach. Additionally, you could employ a way to cover the depth camera (your hand) to reset the tracking since this will make all depth/ir invalid and will need to rebuild.

-- Carmine Sirignano - MSFT

In the same thread, RobAcheson points out that restarting the sensor is another workaround:

I've been using the by-hand method successfully for a while and that definitely works - when I'm in the crowd :)

I have started calling KinectSensor.Close() and KinectSensor.Open() when there are >6 skeletons if none are in the target area. That seems to be working well too. Now I just need a crowd to test with.

-- RobAcheson

Upvotes: 2

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