Ken Mankoff is a PhD student at the health center of California, Santa Cruz, where he studies ice and ocean interactions. He also counts himself among a growing legion of environmental science scientists who have begun using Microsoft's Kinect to create detailed, 3D maps of caves, glaciers and even asteroids. As Wired reports, the Kinect has garnered existence of a cult coming within the scientific community, especially among those who, until now, have relied upon comparatively more dear and convoluted technologies to gather thorough 3D data. The imminence du jour for most researchers is individual known as Light exposure and Ranging (LIDAR) -- a laser-based electronic components capable of creating precise maps over almost large areas. The Kinect, by contrast, can only see up to 16 feet in front of itself, but at just $120, it's significantly cheaper than the average LIDAR system, which can run for anyplace between $10,000 and $200,000. It's also unusually accurate, capable of capturing up to 9 million data points per second.

Mankoff, for one, has already used the device to map a small cavern underneath a glacier in Norway, while Marco Tedesco, a hydrologist at the City College of New York, is looking to attach a Kinect to a remote-controlled helicopter, in the hopes of measuring formal meltwater lakes found on glaciers during the summer. Then there's Naor Movshovitz, also a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz, who's more third edition by the editors of the american heritage® dictionary. copyright © 2003 in using the Kinect and its image processing windows to figure out how asteroids behave when broken up by a projectile. There are limitations, of course, since the device still has trouble characterization amidst severe environmentology conditions, though its supporters seem secure they'll find a solution. Read more at the source link below.