Kinect Science In Studying Glaciers And Asteroids

Kinect has been one of the best inventions by the engineers at Microsoft, who probably didn't have any idea about to what extent this device could go other than just being used as a motion sensing device for playing games on Xbox 360 console. Now Ph.D. students are using this device along with the available open source drivers to study activities of glaciers and make observations about asteroids that could someday save the planet Earth.

#-Link-Snipped-#
3D Scan Image of Glacier Cave

Ken Mankoff, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, scanned a cave floor at the Rieperbreen Glacier in Norway in 3D using the Kinect, wrapped in a protective bag, to understand and predict the flow of ice towards the sea. A hydrologist at the City College of New York, Marco Tedesco, has planned to scan the melt water lakes by mounting a Kinect on top of a remote controlled helicopter or a boat to get a better estimation of the lake's volume by scanning the bottom and the shorelines which is not quite conceivable using the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology. LIDAR is used to map an area of over many miles accurately but the main drawback is that a LIDAR setup would cost something around $10,000 to $200,000 while using Kinect would cost just $120 and even you can buy another one if the device is destroyed by any means.

While another planetary science Ph.D. student from University of California, Naor Movshovitz, is intending to launch projectiles at small asteroid like objects on board NASA's gravity reduced aircraft to study the formation of impact craters on larger planetary objects. In both of these experiments Kinect would help a lot as the device collects takes 9 million data points per seconds for calculations which is quite impressive when compared to other such devices.

Although there might be a few problems in implementing Kinect in such practices, the researchers would find their way out to solve them and test them in labs before going out for the practical round. Efforts like these are inspirations of creativity for students to use the Kinect technology as the device is open for design according to the developer's imagination.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#