Archaeologists turn Kinect into handheld 3D scanner (Wired UK)

Archaeologists turn Kinect into handheld 3D scanner

By Mark Brown

02 August 11

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On an upcoming archaeological dig in Jordan, University of California, San Diego students will have to make room in their luggage -- alongside the trowels and shovels -- for a Microsoft Kinect.

That's because the university's research scientist Jürgen Schulze and Masters student Daniel Tenedorio have created a modified version of the Xbox 360 peripheral that turns it into a cheap and easy-to-use handheld 3D scanner.

The Kinect can be used to capture 3D data by sending out thousands of infrared dots from a projector and then measuring how long they take to ping off of an object and come back to a CMOS sensor. A bog-standared video camera is used to take colour data.

Schulze and Tenedorio also plopped a five-pronged infrared sensor to the top of the Kinect to track its position and orientation in space with overhead cameras. This allows the user to hold the camera up like an airport scanner and wave it around an object (or person) to capture their data.

via wired.co.uk

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