Skip to main content

3D Camera Mobility

Unlike LiDAR-based systems, cameras provide both geometric and semantic information, allowing robots not only to understand the structure of the environment, but also to recognize and interpret objects.

This section focuses on the system architecture and core capabilities, and connects to hands-on demos provided in the Robotic Suite.

1. System Overview​

A typical 3D camera-based robot includes:

  • Sensor: RGB-D camera or stereo camera
  • Perception: Visual SLAM, depth estimation, object detection
  • Planning: Path planning with vision-based inputs
  • Action: Robot base control

This corresponds to the robotics pipeline:

  • /camera/image + /depth → /perception → /plan → /cmd_vel

2. Key Capabilities​

  • Visual SLAM
    Perform localization and mapping using camera data

  • Depth Perception
    Estimate distance using RGB-D or stereo vision

  • Semantic Understanding
    Detect and classify objects (e.g., people, obstacles, markers)

  • Scene Understanding
    Combine geometry and AI to interpret environments

  • Autonomous Navigation
    Navigate using vision-based perception

3. Demo & Sample Code​

To help you get started, the Robotic Suite provides pre-built demo applications and sample code for 3D camera-based mobility.

Available Samples​

These samples are all packaged in containers to enable rapid evaluation and learning.

👉 Please refer to the corresponding sample code pages for:

  • Step-by-step setup instructions
  • Launch commands
  • Code structure and customization

4. Use Cases​

  • Service robots (human interaction)
  • Retail and hospitality robots
  • Smart surveillance and monitoring
  • AI-powered robotics applications

5. Considerations​

  • Sensitive to lighting conditions
  • Depth accuracy may vary depending on sensor type
  • Higher computational requirements for AI inference
  • May require GPU acceleration for real-time performance

3D Camera Mobility enables robots to achieve rich semantic understanding and AI-driven perception, making it a key technology for intelligent robotics applications.