The TV Series Bones makes me a big fan of Archaeology; I have also followed the adventures of Indiana Jones and these two should be blamed more than anything else.
With Bones I am always intrigued at how they are solving crimes and how they know that there are human remains under the ground.
Now I am more intrigued that people use the Microsoft Kinect for that which has nothing to do with gaming.
As we all know Kinect is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console.
Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through anatural user interface using gestures and spoken commands.
Would it be cool that an archaeological dig in Jordan will be using Kinect in a cool way?
Some University of California, San Diego students are going to make use of the Kinect as a 3D scanning tool to record the positional details of the stuffs that are found.
The same technique is often performed using expensive LIDAR or Light Detection And Ranging systems which is an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, often using pulses from a laser.
They will be using a hacked Kinect system that was created by the California Institute for Telecommunications and IT.
How does it work? It taps into the Kinect data stream blending 3D positional data and color video texture maps to make the scans that can then be inserted into a virtual world.
Through this, it allows the students to study something without actually having to touch it.
Touching something thousands of years old means a lot of care; given that these objects may be fragile so with the hacked Kinect system this will not be a problem anymore.
However the Kinect sensor can only be used indoors but they are working on enhancements that will allow the hacked sensor to be used outside.
{Source: FastCompany}
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