D435F operation in darkness
Hi
In discussion with Intel Sales it was mentioned that we need an external IR illumination to operate our robot at night. However I did some trials with the D435F at night and was surprised about the performance even without external IR illumination. Therefore I wondered if an external IR illumination is really required and what it should benefit.
Here my requirements/settings:
- We sell autonmous mobile robots which drive around often at night (in darkness)
- We would use the D435F for obstacle avoidance. Therefore the required detection range is 0.2 to 3.0m
- We operate some robots in large warehouses (up to 100m long)
- In my tests I have seen that the dot projector at 150mA can reach already 15m distance
- It is not necessary that objects or walls >3m distance are detected
- It is required that no false objects are detected when pointing into 100m free space (darkness)
According my intial trials, the D435F already works pretty fine standalone at night (even without external IR illumination). What did I miss in my trials?
Do you have any hints additional settings which could even improve my results. I just worked with the standard settings and played with the power of the dot projector.
Thanks Roman
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Hi Roman Leuzinger The best technical discussions about use of an external IR illuminator with RealSense cameras are at the links below.
https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/issues/1070
https://github.com/IntelRealSense/librealsense/issues/2000
Intel also have a highly detailed white-paper guide about use of external projectors with RealSense 400 Series cameras.
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Thank you for that links. I have read the white-paper already before but have not find a final answer to my uncertainity.
I understand that the depth noise increases and the resultion decreases when using the IR projector only, especially if it is a IR projector with low dot number.
However, I do not have too hard requirements:
Minimimal object size which I want to be able to detect: 100x100mm in 2m distance. And the depth accuracy can be +-20%. I think that would already cover my use case.
I understand that with IR projector only it will unlikely to detect a wire fence (with 3mm wires) in darkness
Under this conditions do you see it reasonable to operate the D435F without external IR illumination?
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My understanding is that the built-in IR projector's output is suitable for up to 2 m distance from the camera in darkness conditions, and that an IR illuminator would be recommendable if you needed to provide the camera with sufficient IR light to capture objects / surfaces more than 2 m away.
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