Choosing a Zed Camera for Interactive Experience

Hardware
1

Hi All -

My studio is developing an interactive activation that will require multiple skeleton tracking (probably 4-6 people). The experience will be approximately a 10’x10’ footprint (still in the works) and will use gestures (mostly arm waving) to affect elements on a large display on one end.

The audience will be a full range of body types / heights, as it is for kids, who may also have adults with them (not sure how much this matters).

Basically, I just wanted to get any thoughts on which camera(s) to use and if there are any technical hurdles I should expect.

Thanks!

2

Hi Steve,

For this type of application, I always recommend the ZED 2i camera.
It’s a USB camera with a wide angle which is very nice for interactive experiences.

With 4 to 6 people in such a small area, you might need to use more than one camera to prevent any occlusion and tracking loss.
For mainly arm tracking, I’d say 2 cameras should be enough with one on each side.

To have the best tracking quality, you need to make sure :

  • What you need to track(the arms in your case) are always visible by at least one camera. That is why I recommend using a second camera.
  • The lighting conditions are good. Indeed, our body tracking module is fully based on the RGB image so the tracking quality can greatly decrease in low-light env.

You can completely start with only one camera to see how it goes and update to two later if needed.

Here are some links to our documentation:

Body tracking doc: https://www.stereolabs.com/docs/body-tracking
Fusion module doc: https://www.stereolabs.com/docs/fusion/overview

Let me know if you need anything else.

Best regards,
Benjamin V.

Stereolabs Support

3

Thanks, Benjamin!

Two follow-ups ?'s:

  • When you say “one on each side”, and considering the front of the experience a screen, do you mean the left and right, or front and back?
  • Is there an out of the box demo to run to see how well one camera is tracking (perhaps it is just seeing the skeleton tracking in Unity)?

Thanks!

Steve

4

I meant front and back, sorry.

We have ready-to-use samples/demos in Unity to demonstrate the tracking features but you need a camera to test it.

Stereolabs Support