kinect_point_cloud

About

Draws real-time 3D point cloud with Kinect. The point cloud can be exported as .ply file, processed later with a viewer (included too).

Pre-reuisites

The following libraries must be installed over pip to run this software (for python >= 3.5):

• pip3 install opencv-python - used to do the depth information to 3D projection
• pip3 install pyvista and pyvistaqt - 3D visualization library, used to visualize the 3D data
• pip3 install PyQt5 - needed as the frontend for pyvista
• pip3 install freenect - library to access kinect RGB-D data

Command line parameters

The first kinect_3d_view.py file is the real-time Kinect data viewer. Uses freenect library to receive the frames from the RGB-D Kinect camera and uses pyvista + PyQt5 as GUI to visualize it. Interaction is over the mouse. Command-line options:

python3 kinect_3d_view.py --help
usage: kinect_3d_view.py [-h] -camid camera

optional arguments:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -camid camera  usb port on which kinect is connected, camid=[None,0,1,2,3],
                 default=None

When the GUI is running, there is a save command available in the menu, to save the current view as .ply output.

The ply_view.py file is a very simple ply viewer program, using the pyvista built-in functions. The program provide also an animated gif generation, see command-line options.

python3 ply_view.py --help
usage: ply_view.py [-h] -f file [-o orbit] [-cp camposition]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -f file          filename.ply, load a .ply file
  -o orbit         [0, 1] creat animated gif, orbiting over the .ply objects
  -cp camposition  camera position, default [(0, -0.5, 5.0), (0.0, 0.0, 3.0),
                   (0, 1, 0)]

Resources

• pyvista docs
• Technical information from kinect
• Polygon File Format .ply and here
• Kinect Calibration info

/Enjoy.