Intel this week introduced its new RealSense Tracking Camera T265 featuring 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) inside-out tracking. The tracking device is aimed primarily at various self-driving applications like small robots or drones, but can be applied to other devices that benefit from 6DoF inside-out tracking.
The Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265 is equipped with two fish-eye cameras, each featuring an approximate 170-degree field of view. The data from the cameras is processed by the Intel Movidius Myriad 2 vision processing unit (VPU). Meanwhile, the tracking camera supports Intel’s visual inertial odometry simultaneous localization and mapping (V-SLAM) technology that constructs maps of unfamiliar environments and then repeatedly updates the location of a device within that environment.
The hardware and the V-SLAM algorithm enable applications like robots and drones to accurately navigate within known and unknown surroundings intelligently avoiding obstacles without any need for external sensors (courtesy of 6DoF). Since all processing is done by the Movidius Myriad 2 VPU, the end device can use a very cheap SoC without a lot of compute power, but with a USB 2.0/3.0 interface.
For more advanced applications that need a higher precision and depth, the RealSense Tracking Camera T265 can be paired with the RealSense Depth Camera D400-series.
Intel will begin shipments of the RealSense Tracking Camera T265 on February 28. Each device will cost $199.
Source: Intel