The Intel RealSense and Clear Surfaces

[Kai_F_]

I am thinking about purchasing an intel RealSense F200 (or SR300 now that F200 is discontinued), but my choice depends on how the camera will deal with clear surfaces. Say I point the F200 or SR300 camera at a piece of glass or plexiglass, will the depth information see the plexiglass sheet or the objects behind the plexiglass? That is, will the IR camera get 'messed-up' in relation to the RGB camera when there's a sheet of a clear material in front of the subject I want to be examining in RGB-D?

[samontab]

It depends on the material.

When you say transparent, that is on the visible spectrum. Maybe in infrared it is opaque, and it will work fine, or maybe not.

The realsense camera work by projecting infrared light into the scene and then reading it with an infrared sensible camera. If the infrared light is not there, no depth can be restored. This will depend on the material, some of them will absorb too much of the light, like black in visible, and others will be transparent in IR. Both cases won't work.

[Eli_E_]

Very few imaging techniques (or sensors) can properly reconstruct depth from transparent surfaces. All generations of RealSense cameras will suffer from highly specular, black, or transparent materials.

[MartyG]

An Intel  blog entry from a year ago reckoned that that the camera can have more difficulty reading the face of people wearing glasses. 

https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/01/19/face-tracking-using-the-intel-realsense-sdk-bkms

"Reliably capturing expression information (e.g., EXPRESSION_MOUTH_OPEN, EXPRESSION_SMILE) can be problematic when the user is wearing eyeglasses"

[Kai_F_]

Is there a way I can know if a material is opaque on the IR spectrum before I buy the F200/SR300?

[samontab]

Easiest way would be to just see it through an infrared camera.

But you would still not be 100% it would work as you expect.

At $99, I would just get one and test it out.