We love depth-sensing cameras and every clever hack they enable, but this technological novelty has not yet achieved mass commercial success.So when CRN reported it, it was sad but not surprising Intel has decided to close its RealSense product line.
At the time of writing, one of the better confirmations of the report can be found at the following URL RealSense SDK GitHub Repository ReadmeThe good news is that for the foreseeable future, the core depth-sensing RealSense products will continue to operate as usual, but the bad news is that some interesting branches (face authentication, motion tracking) will immediately announce the “end of life” and be phased out in the next For six months.
This information tells us that although those who live at the forefront will have to scramble, there will be no immediate crisis for everyone else, whether they are researchers, hobbyists or product planners. But this also means that there will be no real sense cameras in the future, which has triggered a lot of “what’s the next step?” discussions in various communities.like This thread Discussion on ROS (Robot Operating System).
Three popular alternatives offer very different trade-offs. The name of “Been Around The Block” is Occipital, and its Structure Pro sensor is more expensive. The “old name, new face” option is Microsoft Azure Kinect, which is the latest non-game-focused successor to the gaming peripherals that started it all. Let us not forget OAK-D as a “block newcomer”. It starts from crowdfunding activities and builds user communities by holding competitions and other activities. Each of these will attract a different niche market, and we will keep an eye on it in the future. Let’s see if any of them have found success that the original Kinect, Google’s Tango, and now Intel’s RealSense could not achieve.
[via Engadget]