A Mobile Robot For Modeling The World In 3D

Roland Piquepaille writes "A German team from Fraunhofer AIS has coupled a fast autonomous robot with a 3D laser scanner to digitize the environment. The team reports about their work in this article, one of fifteen on the subject of machine perception published by ERCIM News. "Kurt3D is an autonomous mobile robot equipped with a reliable and precise 3D laser scanner that digitalizes environments. High quality geometric 3D maps with semantic information are automatically generated after the exploration by the robot." This overview tells you more about the four-step method used to generate 3D models with this robot and contains several pictures of Kurt3D and its 3D laser."

Comments

One practical use...

[cjpez]

I think this robot could have many practical applications in the field of mapping out office buildings for inclusion in FPS games. Frag your coworkers!

Not good for the construction industry

[Squeebee]

Man, as if it's bad enough for builders that some architect can come around and harass you for being 1 inch off with a divider wall, now the architect will just send the robot down to measure out the entire building in 3d and point out any screwups!

Digitize the environment?

[burgburgburg]

Or 3D digitize our human features, then contact the base station so that they can begin fabricating replicas. Considering how many times even semi-autonomous robots have conspired to overthrow humans, you'd think that researchers would stop giving them the tools to try, try again.

I, for one, do NOT welcome our human form replicated robot overlords. Who's with me? John and Sarah Conner? That makes three. Who else?

Kurt3D *sucks* in practice.

[mr_luc]

I tried to get Kurt3D to create a laser scan of the Hall of Mirrors in my glass house, and the resulting mesh was almost complete gibberish.

Also, I am now blind.