Kinect@Home Builds A 3D World
Written by Harry Fairhead   
Tuesday, 04 September 2012

If you have a Kinect you can join in a new project to map the entire world in 3D - well at least a as much of it as possible. Kinect@Home is a community effort to input 3D models to a server. 

All you have to do is download some drivers and a plugin and use your Kinect to scan the area you want to make a 3D model of. The data is uploaded and your reward is a 3D model that you can embed in a web page. You can also download the model to use in your own software.

 

kinectathome

 

The following video explains how it all works.  

 

What is the point of all of this?

The simple answer is robots need "big data". It may be a catchphrase, but when it comes to machine learning the more data the better. By establishing a library of 3D models, robots and machine learning software can improve their recognition and planning. 

 

You can see a sample of the 3D model embedded in a browser below:

 

There is a gallery of models that have already been recorded.

An even more ambitous project would be to provide robots with a complete 3D map of an environment. This would make it possible for it to work out where it was in the real world and move to a new location. Of course, it could feed any new features it found back into the map. At the moment Kinect@home doesn't record GPS positions, so the models are purely local. 

 

kinectathomemodel

 

 

 

More Information

Kinect@Home

Related Articles

Practical Windows Kinect In C#

All About Kinect

Introduction To Kinect

 

espbook

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, install the I Programmer Toolbar, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin,  or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Banner


.NET 9 Released
18/11/2024

.NET 9 has been released with a number of performance improvements and new features designed to help developers use AI.



Ai-Da's Portrait of Alan Turing At Auction
01/11/2024

Sotheby's Digital Art Day Action, now underway, features a large-scale portrait of  Alan Turing created by Ai-Da, the humanoid robot artist whose work, including this canvas, was exhibited at the [ ... ]


More News

 

 

 

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 04 September 2012 )