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Australian Police Deploy 3D Crime Scene Scanner
angry tapir writes "Police in the Australian state of Queensland will employ a handheld laser scanner that can be used to map crime scenes, including in areas where there is no GPS reception. The police will use the Australian developed Zebedee laser scanner: A LiDAR scanner that is mounted on a spring. As a user walks around, the spring moves and the scanner captures the surrounding area. Software processing then uses the data to construct a 3D model. Previously the technology has been used to capture areas of cultural significance, such as the interior of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As an added bonus, the Zebedee looks ridiculous when in use."
Three VIDEO ADS on the homepage, and for FASHION THEATER (whatever that is), no less? Are you completely out of your minds?
And, where is the link allowing people with good karma to disable ads? I've always tolerated the ads in the past to support the site, but this nonsense is ridiculous. I cannot have a bunch of worthless video ads sucking bandwidth away from my VoIP. Either get rid of this nonsense or I won't be coming here anymore.
I swear, sometimes it seems like electrical and computer engineers are on a mission to make everyone else look as socially inept and awkward as they are.
I hope someone's recording the first time some guy is walking around with that Zebedee and happens to approach a group of attractive women... the jokes will write themselves!
#DeleteChrome
If you look around the billboard in grand Central NY you will see one already there. It's a small unit so pay attention.
Checking for any jack-in-the-box crime near the Magic Roundabout.
Police have used similar devices in the US for years. There was even a television program called Crime 360 that used a Leica 3D laser camera.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_360
Man. Is this what passes for "nerd" news now on Slashdot? What's next? Articles on how to install Windows 98 SE?
Because my arm will get tired.
Because my, um....
This should shed some new light on modern criminals.
It brings a whole new dimension to crime fighting.
My first thought was that this would be a really cool method of mapping caves. It turns out that this system has already been put to that use (http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/9581/2/).
I wonder how long it will be before this kind of thing is accessible to individuals.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
in order to sell to organizations, the thing need to look more professional instead of cobbled together from random parts first, this thing need a rubberized fairing that can flex with the spring, and painted to suit intended users, yellow brown is good, black is better and then add options for helmet mount, you can put this on hardhats in construction site or police's helmet, or if the hardware can be rotated, the spring can probably be mounted on a belt
can be used to map crime scenes, including in areas where there is no GPS reception.
How much use would GPS be when you're mapping a crime scene? Wouldn't you be better off with a camera and a tape measure?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This is just like the orbs that mapped out the alien space ship in the the movie Prometheus. Just attach one of those suckers on some drones and go looking for some Sasquatch and stuff! Can't wait for the higher resolution versions that can spit out data in realtime.
looser! your EDUCATED STUPID, every right-thinking geek knows that only the four-fold symmetry of the multidimensional HOSTS file can protect you from the EVIL of intarweb ads
I've been an AC lurker on slashdot for at least a dozen years. I never found reason to register an account, but would visit several times a day to check out the feed and comments. I've rarely posted, finding AC was plenty enough for me. Although I've found the site less relevant as years went on (slashdot is now basically a day late feed of news.bbc.co.uk with the ability for nerds to comment), muscle memory would lead me to quickly type "sl", let autofill put the rest of the URL in, and then hit return.
Today, I got redirected to beta. Shit. It doesn't even render correctly on IE 8. How the fuck can someone release a website that stretches pictures and jumbles text on top of images? Yes, the format sucks, but the coding appears to be shear incompetence.
I can't figure out how to get the classic view back. So, that will be it for me. I'll be looking for a new home to get "news for nerds".
Goodbye, Slashdot.
So, how far are we from developing modules that can determine the crime coefficients of people, then guns that only shoot projected criminals?
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
The device looks great. Can't wait until they release a version for heterosexual males...
A giant dildo. Yes, I would know.
I'd also expect within the next year or two (or less, considering how cheap they are) that police will be documenting crime scenes with "gigapixel" panoramas. Gigapan sells a robotic mount for DSLRs for under $1000, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.
fencepost
just a little off
and proudly introduce yourself as Inspector Gadget.
If my previous employer, who likely has forgotten me, cared to look in my official work notebook from 2002 that I left in their archives when I left the company in 2006, they would find such a system of lidar-based crime scene capture device and mapping software invention described.
I did not write in enough detail to actually build one, but it would be enough to stop these guys or extort licensing money from them.
Sigh.
I don't know what the precision is on this, but I've seen LIDAR that was used in the civil engineering arena that was precise enough to pick up skid marks on the road. Pretty cool stuff.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
Am I the only one who thinks Csiro's logo is extremely similar to Cisco's?!
What self-respecting nerd uses IE 8??
'Floppy' returns to the lexicon.
Imagine this, I was inside a power station boiler under repair, sharing the space with a dozen welders and scaffolders. I pulled out a hair dryer and turned it on. The laughter stopped after a minute or two.
Technical stuff looks weird sometimes.
I was there to see how much heat damage had occurred over time to a weld in a hot and stressed area. You can do that by grinding back the surface, polishing, acid etching for contrast, then looking at it under a microscope. Powerful microscopes belong on benches instead of tied onto the underside of pipework in confined spaces. Dissolving the right sort of plastic on to a polished surface can give you a very high resolution replica instead of having to lug a microscope around. If the pipework is cold it takes a long time to harden which is why the hairdryer came out.