A Reliable Robot Workspace Monitoring System Using Kinect v2

Kinect is an advanced RGB-D camera developed by Microsoft back in 2010 for Xbox gaming console. Even though it was initially thought as a gaming device, its potential as a 3D depth sensing device grabbed the attention of computer vision and robotic researchers. With the introduction of the second generation of the device (Kinect v2) with improved specifications and technology than its predecessor, we began to see the device applications in robot navigation, producing high quality 3D scans, gesture recognition, virtual and augmented reality. In this paper we evaluate the application of Kinect v2 in robot workspace monitoring, more precisely human presence detection inside a three dimensional robotic workspace using colour and depth streams from Kinect v2.