How to capture depth data from camera in iOS 11 and Swift 4?

Question

I\'m trying to get depth data from the camera in iOS 11 with AVDepthData, tho when I setup a photoOutput with the AVCapturePhotoCaptureDelegate the photo.depthData is nil.

Answer 1

To give more details to @klinger answer, here is what you need to do to get Depth Data for each pixel, I wrote some comments, hope it helps!

func photoOutput(_ output: AVCapturePhotoOutput, didFinishProcessingPhoto photo: AVCapturePhoto, error: Error?) {

    //## Convert Disparity to Depth ##

    let depthData = (photo.depthData as AVDepthData!).converting(toDepthDataType: kCVPixelFormatType_DepthFloat32)
    let depthDataMap = depthData.depthDataMap //AVDepthData -> CVPixelBuffer

    //## Data Analysis ##

    // Useful data
    let width = CVPixelBufferGetWidth(depthDataMap) //768 on an iPhone 7+
    let height = CVPixelBufferGetHeight(depthDataMap) //576 on an iPhone 7+
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(depthDataMap, CVPixelBufferLockFlags(rawValue: 0))

    // Convert the base address to a safe pointer of the appropriate type
    let floatBuffer = unsafeBitCast(CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(depthDataMap), to: UnsafeMutablePointer.self)

    // Read the data (returns value of type Float)
    // Accessible values : (width-1) * (height-1) = 767 * 575

    let distanceAtXYPoint = floatBuffer[Int(x * y)]

}