Lifetime and Deployment Limits for Mobile, 3D-Perceptual Applications

Low-cost image and depth sensors (RGBD) promise a wealth of new applications as mobile computing devices become aware of the 3D structure of their environs. However, while sensors are now cheap and readily available, the computational demands for even basic 3D services such as model-building and tracking are significant. We assess these requirements of a basic 3D service that would be required to support many proposed 3D applications, building an analytical model calibrated with detailed empirical measurements. Our results show that both cooperative use of ensembles of mobile devices and adaptive 3D sensor data processing are important to bring compute requirements into feasible ranges.