A new video has surfaced demonstrating the Microsoft Kinect used as an augmented reality sandbox. Using the depth capabilities of the Kinect, along with a projector, a sand pit is turned into a virtual environment with a real-time colored topographic map.
"Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface using a GPU-based simulation of the Saint-Venant set of shallow water equations. We built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as Lawrence Hall of Science or the Tahoe Environmental Research Center," the video description reads.
We (the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences,
http://www.keckcaves.org) built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) or Lawrence Hall of Science.
Project home page:
http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndboxThe sandbox is based on the original idea shown in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7YVqyudiEThe water flow simulation is based on the work of Kurganov and Petrova, "a second-order well-balanced positivity preserving central-upwind scheme for the Saint-Venant system."
