Kinect laser range - strange values.

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The reason is that Kinect doesn't use single laser beams to get the distance, but a laser image, that is projected into the room. A camera slightly apart from this laser image source 'sees' this image from a slightly different angle and can hence calculate the distances. To do this successfully, objects must have a minimum distance to the Kinect - usually 60cm.

That the sensor reports 11m, when you cover it with your hand, means it has no reasonable values to offer and reports invalid ones. Have a look at range_max value. It will pretty sure be 10m in your case.

If that's the case, everything is ok. Although there should be reasonable values in the laser array, if distances in front of the camera range from 60cm - 6m.