America
Faster 3D camera that works outdoors
New York, April 26
Researchers, including one
of Indian-origin, have developed a 3D camera that is inexpensive,
produces high-quality images, and works in all environments -- including
outdoors.
"When Microsoft released its 3D camera Kinect in 2010,
it transformed the video game industry," said Mohit Gupta, study
co-author from the Columbia University.
The most inexpensive 3D
camera to date, the Kinect bypassed the need for joysticks and
controllers by sensing the user's gestures, leading to a feeling of
total immersion into the game.
But users quickly discovered the
Kinect's limitations. It does not work outdoors and it produces
relatively low-quality images, the study said.
"In order for a 3D
camera to be useful, it has to be something you can use in everyday,
normal environments," said Oliver Cossairt, assistant professor of
electrical engineering and computer science at the Northwestern
University.
"Outdoors is a part of that, and that is something
the Kinect cannot do, but our Motion Contrast 3-D scanner can," Cossairt
noted.
The project is supported by the Office of Naval Research and the US Department of Energy.
The
new camera has many applications for devices in science and industry
that rely on capturing the 3-D shapes of scenes "in the wild," such as
in robotics, bioinformatics, augmented reality, and manufacturing
automation.
It could potentially also be used for navigation
purposes, install on anything from a car to a motorised wheelchair,
study pointed out.
The findings were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston.