Comparative Study of Intel R200, Kinect v2, and Primesense RGB-D Sensors Performance Outdoors

Recent emergence of affordable consumer RGB-D sensors have pushed efforts to use these sensors for a variety of applications under different environmental conditions. Sensors, such as the Microsoft Kinect v2, Asus Xtion Pro Live, and the Intel Realsense R200, are easily accessible RGB-D sensors each utilizing time-of-flight (ToF), structured-light (SL), and active stereo vision (ASV) technologies, respectively, to calculate depth data. All three sensors utilize near-infrared (NIR) light projection (750-1400nm) to obtain depth data. This paper compares all three sensors for capturing 3D surface data of simple objects outdoors where there's strong sunlight NIR interference. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide a practical evaluation of the quality of the 3D data returned of object's surfaces from the sensors under strong NIR interference. In general, in terms of capturing 3D surface data of objects outdoors, the Kinect v2 is better than the R200. This is highly dependent on object distance as well as strength of the NIR interference. The Intel R200 sensor is capable of capturing depth data of objects at further ranges than the Kinect v2 but cannot capture depth data of homogeneously textured surfaces. The Asus Xtion cannot capture 3D data outdoors. Under indoor conditions, the Kinect v2 and the Asus Xtion perform better at capturing 3D surface data of objects than the Intel R200.