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.
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
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.
Military Grade LEGO
They' called caltrops.
Of course, if we're buying them on a military contract, they cost 20x as much as the civilian version.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
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.