[HN Gopher] Intel is giving up on its AI-powered RealSense cameras
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       Intel is giving up on its AI-powered RealSense cameras
        
       Author : danboarder
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2021-08-18 06:56 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
        
       | paulkrush wrote:
       | This sucks for those of us that have put a lot into RealSense.
       | They were far more mature than what is on the market.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | What about the Stereolabs Zed cameras?
        
           | paulkrush wrote:
           | Realsense does all processing on the camera(on a ASIC). See
           | this related discussion that has Zed issues:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28225065
        
       | paulkrush wrote:
       | The RealSense modules were almost 1/2 the price of the cameras.
       | The D450 module was a great price at $125 each with 3 global
       | shutter cameras. The L515 Lidar was really accurate. This reminds
       | me of how one by one the consumer cameras lost their API's, and
       | how GoPro never bothered to give an API to developers.
       | 
       | Velabit has been vaporware. Same with Microsoft kinect DK, they
       | are now saying Oct 2022 for shipments. Oak AI uses Intel
       | Movidius, and I just can't trust Intel after buying and basically
       | killing Movidius, and now killing off Realsense. I have to look
       | at the others.
        
         | brutus1213 wrote:
         | Are you sure Movidius was killed? I thought a bunch of dji
         | drones use Intel's VPS (which I assumed was movidius).
        
           | paulkrush wrote:
           | Modvidius was not killed, it was throttled by Intel. They had
           | a whole traditional computer vision side of the chip that
           | they did not allow developers to get into, including stereo
           | vision. Think OpenCV on a ASIC. Intel redefined "computer
           | vision" to mean "Processes that can be run through a tensor
           | engine and be integrated into OpenVino.
        
         | porcc wrote:
         | IMO Lidar and FaceID on iPhones are the last bastion for
         | consumer depth cameras. I pray that they won't go away and
         | instead Lidar will end up on the non-pro variants.
        
         | dendrite9 wrote:
         | We looked at these for a customer project but decided based on
         | Intel's past approach that by the time the project was ready
         | for higher volume sales they might not be available. That
         | project ended, but this isn't great to see.
        
       | 19h wrote:
       | I wasn't even aware those cameras existed. How's it that
       | companies keep killing products when they essentially invest zero
       | into marketing them? Seems like they didn't even try ..
       | 
       | The concept of the RealSense cameras seems really interesting,
       | especially for building IoT projects that require a lidar or face
       | detection for authentication etc..
       | 
       | At $249 and $369 they also seem really affordable for those
       | projects... what a pity.
        
         | p_l wrote:
         | RealSense was reasonably big in industrial solutions, either
         | directly or as part of solutions from robotics vendors.
         | 
         | I know of them from trying to optimize bin packing of items in
         | transport racks :-)
        
         | belval wrote:
         | I got an SR300 for 150$ CAD, really sad to see them shutdown,
         | the product really felt high-quality at a price point that was
         | not obscene for a 1080p camera + 480p depth sensor.
        
       | jimmySixDOF wrote:
       | MS still has Azure Kinect (basically v3) which is integrated to
       | the AR/Hololens ecosystem. There are so many advances every year
       | in Computer Vision that make use of RGB-D so I hope the field
       | will expand not contract - specifically now as AR/VR applications
       | are maturing to take advantage of them either for vanilla full
       | body tracking or for realworld extension of the game space.
       | 
       | I have on my desk a camera from OpenCV's Kickstarter that just
       | finished shipping and they it got down to $150 [1]. Velodyne just
       | released a $100 Lidar sensor which is not a camera but shows what
       | is possible these days if your looking to add depth.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/opencv/opencv-ai-kit
       | [2]https://velodynelidar.com/products/velabit/
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-18 23:02 UTC)