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We haven’t checked out the hacker scene in a bit, so we thought we’d see what’s up in the world of the science in this edition of cool uses.
Just about every movie or TV show of the future has a robotic butler or maid that serves the family (hopefully without killing them). Whether it was Rosie from Jetsons or those creepy guys from iRobot, the idea of having a mechanical man there to cook your breakfast and clean up after that long party while you sleep is very appealing. We haven’t quite got to that point yet, but thanks to the Kinect, researchers are one step closer to that goal.
James and Rosie (yup, they actually called one of the robots that), two mechanical wonders created by the robotic lab at University of Munich, are able to pop you up some stovetop popcorn, cook pancakes on the griddle, and even make you a sandwich. Once they are given the command, they analyze what is around them according to certain parameters using the Kinect. It’s ability to create special relationship and recognize objects helps the “brains” of the robots figure out whether they are looking at a toaster, a drawer or a piece of bread. Then it’s just a matter of manipulating the pieces that it finds to do the task at hand, all on their own.
The process is still a little rough around the edges, as you can see from the video, although James looks like he got his corn popping skills down pat, where Rosie still needs a bit of work in getting her act together. She dropped the toast and took a few shots at getting the cheese, but all in all, did better than you’d think for something that was acting in real time. All because of the motion sensor.
The Kinect’s ability to see and map its surroundings in 3D is also of great interest to a lot of scientists for exploration. A glacier expert Ken Mankoff is using the device to scan the cave floor in 3D with the goal of being able to see how the flow of water is affecting the ice floor. Now there is, of course, very sophisticated equipment to do this already called LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and most researchers use that, but it is extremely expensive and not repairable by just about anyone should it break down. The Kinect, on the other hand, costs around $150 (or less) and can do the same thing, only with a few caveats. One is that its visual ability only ranges from perhaps 6-16 feet. Whether it’s a liquid like the sea or a ice crust, the Kinect could be placed on a boat or hung from a remote helicopter to get the data that they need, so that’s not as foreboding. The other issue is that the camera’s lens in the sensor is sensitive to extreme cold which can fog up the lens. They haven’t found a good way around that yet because the lens tends to mess up the sight of the device, but they are still working on it. Perhaps they should talk to Nyko, who created the Zoom (glasses for the sensor).
In a possible application, the Kinect is being considered to study the effect of a projectile on an asteroid to see what impact it would have and how the fragments would disperse. In that case, scientists could use the sensor in what they call the Vomit Comet, a military plane that is able to make steep climbs and dives to simulate zero gravity. Stones would be placed in a centrifuge in order to create a tenth of the gravity (as it would be in real space). The 3D system would then record and analyze what transpires at the point of collision. The problem here though is that doing so requires a much higher frame rate than the Kinect can do, so that may be a while before it can be used effectively, but it presents an interesting challenge.
And to think, everyone thought it was just a device to play games in a new way at its release, including Microsoft. Go figure.
