How AR/VR can be used in enterprise businesses

Intel introduced the Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265, a new stand-alone inside-out tracking device that will supposedly provide developers with a building block for autonomous devices, delivering high-performance guidance and navigation.

The T265 uses proprietary visual inertial odometry simultaneous localisation and mapping (V-SLAM) technology with computing at the edge and is key for applications that require an accurate and low-latency tracking solution, including robotics, drones, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality.

Intel RealSense Group VP Sagi Ben Moshe says, "Understanding your environment is a critical component for many devices. The T265 was designed to complement our existing Intel RealSense Depth Cameras and provide a quick path to product development with our next-generation integrated V-SLAM technology.

The Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265 is good for applications where tracking the location of a device is important, especially in locations without GPS services, such as warehouses or remote outdoor areas where the camera uses a combination of known and unknown data to accurately navigate to its destination.

The T265 is also designed for flexible implementation and can be easily added to small-footprint mobile devices like lightweight robots and drones, as well as for connectivity with mobile phones or AR headsets.

For example, integrating the T265 into a robot designed for agriculture allows the device to navigate fields in a precise lawn-mower-style pattern and intelligently adapt to avoid obstacles in its environment, including structures or people.

Whether bringing medical supplies to remote, off-the-grid areas or to a lab inside a hospital ward, the T265 can be used in drone or robotic deliveries due to its wider field of view and optimisation for tracking use cases.

The Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265 uses inside-out tracking, which means the device does not rely on any external sensors to understand the environment. Unlike other inside-out tracking solutions, the T265 delivers 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) inside-out tracking by gathering inputs from two onboard fish-eye cameras, each with an approximate 170-degree range of view.

The V-SLAM systems construct and continually update maps of unknown environments and the location of a device within that environment. Since all position calculations are performed directly on the device, tracking with the T265 is platform independent and allows the T265 to run on very low-compute devices.

The T265 complements Intel's RealSense D400 series cameras, and the data from both devices can be combined for advanced applications like occupancy mapping, improved 3D scanning and advanced navigation and collision avoidance in GPS-restricted environments.

The only hardware requirements are sufficient non-volatile memory to boot the device and a USB 2.0 or 3.0 connection that provides 1.5 watts of power.