Slashdot Mirror
Marines Put Microsoft Kinect To Work For 3D Mapping
colinneagle points out this article about how the Marines are using a Microsoft Kinect to build maps. A military contractor has come up with something that has the U.S. Marine Corps interested. The Augmented Reality Sand Table is currently being developed by the Army Research Laboratory and was on display at the Modern Day Marine Expo that recently took place on Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The set-up is simple: a table-sized sandbox is rigged with a Microsoft Kinect video game motion sensor and an off-the-shelf projector. Using existing software, the sensor detects features in the sand and projects a realistic topographical map that corresponds to the layout, which can change in real time as observers move the sand around in the box. The setup can also project maps from Google Earth or other mapping and GPS systems, enabling units to visualize the exact terrain they'll be covering for exercises or operations. Eventually, they hope to add visual cues to help troops shape the sandbox to match the topography of a specified map. Eventually, the designers of the sandbox hope to involve remote bases or even international partners in conducting joint training and operations exercises. Future possibilities include large-scale models that could project over a gymnasium floor for a battalion briefing, and a smartphone version that could use a pocket-sized projector to turn any patch of dirt into an operational 3-D map.
This war brought to you by Microsoft (tm) and Google (tm).
How many Bothans will die to get these plans?
Congratulations, Slashdot ... this is precisely what you should have expected when you opened your authentication to any asshole with a facebook account.
High digit UIDs which show as facebook logins posting spam.
Oh, and to the poster ... fuck you you slimy sack of human excrement.
I swear, we could make Slashdot twice as intelligent by getting rid of the 7 digit ids.
...you'd build a situation room on the scale of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... EXCEPT the floor is made of pushrods, each representing a pixel of the minimum terrain-definition reachable by satellite tools at whatever scale you want.
Each pushrod, of course, has an actuator under the floor that would allow it to raise up, allowing you in moments to download a satellite heightmap, and voila- have the floor of the room immediately show the terrain represented in actual 3d.
Make the rods white, of course, so overhead projectors can at flood areas with color - blue for water, green for vegetation, built-up areas in yellow, or to allow highlighting certain areas visually with lighting during a presentation.
Of course, as higher-resolution maps become available, the scale of what you can display at full resolution grows smaller as the tech improves, but then again you can always have varying-scale presentations, showing the whole area at one scale, and zooming into another (resetting the pushrods) for detail view.
A smart contractor, of course, would just lobby for bigger facilities.
That's what I would do, anyway.
-Styopa
The local museum has one of these - it uses a combo of XBox and that poly-sand stuff that sticks together. Kids can make mountains, rivers, and lakes with their hands. The kinect detects the depth and then the XBox animates the terrain.
Rather than having people stack sand - they need a bendable floor that changes shape. Kind of like those toys with 1000's of nails/pins in them that conform to the shape of an object. Place a solenoid on each one and raise/lower to the necessary shape - covered with a plain cloth. Then project onto it.
A new breed of holodeck?
Mod Parent Up! Wish I had mod points.
Which brings up the question: could we implement a filter that weeds out high UID's, similar to the way we can filter comments right now by moderation?
Military Grade LEGO, of course.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
It could easily be done! The problem is that Dice wouldn't implement it because they don't give a rats ass about this site or any other site they buy. The only thing they care about is how many users they have to look at advertisements. That is why the beta site has no way to suppress ads like the standard site does. The minute the standard site goes away, and beta becomes the norm I will be gone.
21559/88 = 245 is more than "a few" hours; it's actually over 6 weeks of full-time work. Also, why do you have a roommate if you know of an $88/hr job? Why don't you apply for one of these jobs yourself so that you can make 6 figures and get your own place? Furthermore, how can you say she is "out of a job for 10 months" if she's doing work for money? Additionally, what benefit is it to you to spread awareness of this fantastic opportunity?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
It's spam, did you expect a logical set of ideas?
The link in the summary goes to NetworkWorld's pictureless, short rehash of Marine Corps Times' better article . Go there for the details and some actual pictures.
See the Tangible GIS system that works with a Kinect and GRASS GIS that has been around for a couple of years. Currently set up for Hydrologic modeling and Fire Spread simulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISDa-n-wnIY
http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/tangeoms.html
Congratulations, Slashdot ... this is precisely what you should have expected when you opened your authentication to any asshole with a facebook account.
High digit UIDs which show as facebook logins posting spam.
Oh, and to the poster ... fuck you you slimy sack of human excrement.
I swear, we could make Slashdot twice as intelligent by getting rid of the 7 digit ids.
Hiya! I'm not a bot!
obvious troll is obvious.
I think it's a fair set of questions to put in front of other peoples eyes. Unfortunately, most /. readers are probably not the ones needing this kind of logical thinking. But, if more people thought about questions like these before clicking the links, they'd get scammed less and we'd have less spam, a win-win scenario. Consider it an educational post for anonymous readers.
I swear, we could make Slashdot twice as intelligent by getting rid of the 7 digit ids.
It might be funny that this is posted as AC to bypass showing the id. I can't be sure though since mine has too many digits...
find a way to get game consoles into military bases... Oh, wait. Never mind. http://goo.gl/vXyxO
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The investment to make these scan spam accounts probably makes it worthwhile if they only have a clickthrough rate of 1/1000. Most netizens see it for what it is however many people do think that replying with anger is going to solve the problem. It's easier to report and ignore (when those functions are available)
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Congratulations, Slashdot ... this is precisely what you should have expected when you opened your authentication to any asshole with a facebook account.
I swear, we could make Slashdot twice as intelligent by getting rid of the 7 digit ids.
It interests me that you posted this response as an A/C.
The problem with Slashdot isn't the 7-digit ID.
The problem with Slashdot is that the geek's mind turns to mush when the talk turns to certain subjects, like intellectual property or gender issues in tech.
Maybe with all these non gaming uses something can finally be done with the thousands of kinect's sitting gathering dust.
I'm sorry about this, but I need to say something.
You can be out of a job, or unemployed, and still earn some money as an independent contractor. So, that part isn't totally illogical.
Now, on a further note, we don't know what the job requires. I'm not going to bother checking, but maybe it requires thumbs. And the poster, and roommate in question, unlike the aunt, perhaps... you know... don't have thumbs of their own?
Or maybe the poster and roommate operate their own Internet sex dungeon that pays way more than $88/hour. Hence why the need for a roommate still.
You're welcome to implement whatever you want yourself. Incidentally, my original UID (circa 1998) was considerably lower than yours, for whatever that's worth.
Write failed: Broken pipe
You can be out of a job, or unemployed, and still earn some money as an independent contractor. So, that part isn't totally illogical.
I've worked as a 1099 contractor before. I wasn't an "employee" per tax law, but I was still working, and I still had a job.
Valid points about thumbs and sex dungeon, though.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.