3D News: Orbbec, Chiaro, OptAssyst

Shenzhen, China-based Orbbec starts to accept pre-orders for its structured light 3D cameras: a longer range Astra, and a shorter range Astra S. Both Astra cameras are supposed to be compatible with discontinued after acquisition by Apple Primesense cameras and its NUI middleware:

Orbbec comes up with a series of comparison videos against Primesense, Kinect-1 and Kinect-2 cameras.

Thanks to HJ for the pointer.

Boulder, CO-based Chiaro Technologies presents its 3D sensing technology based on patented Symbolic Light. Chiaro's camera consists of a sensor head and a decoding API for either a PC host or an embedded system. The efficient 3D decoding improves frame-rate while leaving a room for application. Cloudburst is designed with machine vision in mind.

Chiaro camera is said to excel in building 3D maps of reflective objects, such as metallic ones:

Two coins and a machined part on a black-and-white checker pattern. Under low lights in a 12-bit image (a), specular reflections saturate the camera while the checker pattern remains dim. Typical 3D capture (b) misses regions of the 3D point cloud. Chiaro’s XDI-3D system with HDR (c) can capture 3D images of this scene, capturing everything from the black squares to the shiny surfaces of coins, all under regular ambient lighting conditions.

Meanwhile, German Optassyst drives an ISO initiative "Fair Datasheet" to define a standard way to write datasheets for 3D depth cameras, so that customers can easily compare their performance and merits. The proposed ISO standard definitions mainly target machine vision and industrial 3D cameras.

Thanks to TL for the link!