steve_k

Actually, I don't think so. Its kind of hard to get any technical information on the real sense and I know that Intel is making different versions of it, so please correct me if I'm wrong and if they have one which really does stereo. On http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-tech... they say the following:

"The Intel® RealSense™ Camera F200 is actually three cameras in one—a 1080p HD camera, an infrared camera, and an infrared laser projector"

So this is just looks like the first Kinect. The infrared camera will observe the projected pattern and the RGB camera is there to capture the color information. You can't really match an infrared image (which is also covered with a laser pattern) with a visible light image, as they will look very different. So you would require a yet another camera (infrared or visible light) in order to do stereo.

The problem that I see with the real-sense is that just like the Kinect it's based on structured light. This means that it will only work indoors (just like the Kinect). So their cool demo with putting that on a drone is kind of pointless, because who flies a drone indoors?

There are now some devices available which can provide depth data through passive stereo vision. I have recently seen this one in action: http://nerian.com/products/sp1-stereo-vision/

The problem with that, however, is that it is targeted at industrial market and probably way to expensive for any ordinary consumers. I guess we will still have to wait for some major revolution in depth sensing.