Is it possible that the Kinect can also distinguish colors? Well from the looks of it, this Kinect Colored Ball Kicker Robot is doing just that. Given a set of balls to choose from, this Kinect robot was programmed to specifically tag a blue ball. Youtube user nndhawan showcases this latest Kinect breakthrough and documents the Kinect robot’s amazing feat of distinguishing not only by shape, but also by color. The robot is seen detecting multiply balls. Without having the proper color, the robot simply ignores the other balls. When the robot has detected the blue ball, it skims to the destination and unleashes a push. This simple procedure might be trivial, but the concept of color detection is truly remarkable. We don’t know the authenticity of the program but if any would attest to this Kinect’s feat, then we would gladly share it with the community.
Here is a description by the developer:
“This is a robot I designed and built at the University of Florida. Its main objective is to locate and kick a blue ball.
I make use of the Kinect, the Beagleboard, OpenCV and the Angstrom Linux Embedded Operating System to make all of this happen.”
For more information about the Kinect Colored Ball Kicker Robot, visit the project’s Youtube Page.
Kinect has 2 camera + an IR emitter. One camera sees only IR, but the other is a conventional colour camera. You need to align the depth image with the colour image and then you can see the colours of the segmented objects and even use object recognition techniques on them.