ToF v2 outdoor noise

James Strawson

That's a typo on the website we've just corrected. The Starling 2 Max does not include a TOF sensor, and this sensor is not intended for outdoor use.

I spent some time tuning the TOF point cloud processing filter params on Friday to reduce noise. These changes are in the dev branch now: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commit/919c24bef21cbea2eb7be33853884f5f606a0763

These these changes are likely to help in the outdoor use case too so I suggest giving it a go.

MattK

@James-Strawson Hmmm, unfortunate typo. Does the Starling Max 2 use its dual IMX412 color image sensors to get depth-from-stereo, in order to do outdoor VOA? I wasn't too impressed with the quality of outdoor DFS that I got from the M0015, but perhaps the IMX412s are better?

Appreciate the extra help/guidance on TOF processing, I'll try take a look. Even though the outdoor use case is not ideal, I'm still leaning towards trying to make the TOF sensors work for us, as the results I'm getting still seem more promising than what I was getting from stereo.

Alex Kushleyev

@MattK ,

James is out of office, so i will respond. The dual IMX412 will not be used for DFS, in fact the cameras will be pointed in different directions (one forward, one down).

Also, IMX412 are rolling shutter cameras, which would make it difficult to get accurate DFS while in motion.

MattK

Thanks, @Alex-Kushleyev .

If that's the case, then what kind of VOA solution is present on the Starling 2 Max?

Moderator

@MattK There is currently no VOA capability on Starling 2 Max

MattK

@Moderator Oh... interesting. You might want to remove this bullet point from its sales page then. https://www.modalai.com/products/starling-2-max?variant=48172375310640

Would you be able to recommend a drone with a working VOA solution? We're interesting in getting one to get a baseline for the quality we can expect from VOXL2's built in VOA SDK. I'm particularly interested in assessing depth-from-stereo, I've gotten good enough results for now from the TOF v2 sensor. But TOF recommendations are welcome as well.

Moderator

@MattK said in ToF v2 outdoor noise:

to remove this bullet point from its sales pag

Thank you, fixed

dlee

@MattK Have you ever tested the EXTRA_LONG_RANGE mode of tof v2? I am also testing VOA outdoors using tof sensor. But it was not enough for me. I tested all of the modes in v2, Extra long-range mode has less noise than other modes. Even though extra long-range mode is better than others, VOA using tof v2 makes the drone stop 2m away from obstacles.

MattK

@dlee Ah, no I have not. I'll give that a try when I get the chance. Thanks!

Jetson Nano

@MattK @Moderator
If the Starling V2 Max doesn't support a DFS server due to IMX412 being rolling shutter cameras and no TOF, then how is the 3D map generated?
Since in my understanding, to generate a map you need depth values/ point cloud data.
If the depth estimates are being obtained by some other means then why can't the same point cloud be made available for VOA in vision-hub server?