The Kinect: a low‐cost, high‐resolution, short‐range 3D camera

Abstract

We present a novel application of the Kinect™, an input device designed for the Microsoft® Xbox 360® video game system. The device can be used by Earth scientists as a low‐cost, high‐resolution, short‐range 3D/4D camera imaging system producing data similar to a terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor. The Kinect contains a structured light emitter, an infrared camera (the combination of these two produce a distance image), a visual wavelength camera, a three‐axis accelerometer, and four microphones. The cost is ~ US $100, frame rate is 30 Hz, spatial and depth resolutions are mm to cm depending on range, and the optimal operating range is 0.5 to ~5 m. The resolution of the distance measurements decreases with distance and is ≤1 mm at 0.5 m and ~75 mm at 5 m. We illustrate data collection and basic data analysis routines in three experiments designed to demonstrate the breadth and utility of this new sensor in domains of glaciology, stream bathymetry, and geomorphology, although the device is applicable to a number of other Earth science fields. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Roughness of a subglacial conduit under Hansbreen, Svalbard

“…Additional data were also collected with the Kinect, a Microsoft XBox video game 3-D camera that can be used as a portable LiDAR-like sensor (Mankoff and Russo, 2013). The Kinect is not used in depth in the analysis here, due to large-scale scene reconstruction issues, but is used as a high-resolution (mm-scale) visual of rocks on the conduit floor.…”

Investigating the geomorphological potential of freely available and accessible structure‐from‐motion photogrammetry using a smartphone

“…However, they remain relatively expensive items of technology and have only recently become truly portable. Thus, much interest remains in acquiring DEM data using much less expensive technologies and the last few years has seen a series of innovative adaptation of imaging systems for geomorphic research, including range imaging (Nitsche et al, 2013) and applications of the Kinect sensor (Mankoff and Russo, 2013). Such methods have proved capable of measuring topographic surfaces with a precision in the mm to cm range as the basis of DEM construction.…”

Microbial processes in the weathering crust aquifer of a temperate glacier

“…May to August (Ensminger et al, 1999;Reynolds, 2005;Mankoff and Russo, 2013), most of the ice column sampled in 2014 would have ablated by the following season (i.e., relative to the ice surface in 2014, the samples collected in 2015 originated from a deeper horizon in the glacier). Curiously, data from a 10 m borehole (BH1) 5 on two consecutive days in 2014 (BH1a and BH1b) clustered with near-surface ice samples, but the assemblages observed on the third day (BH1c) were more similar to those in the deeper 2014 boreholes (Fig.…”

“…When the latter is the case, the surface melt rate was calculated using the Positive-Degree-Day parametrization (van Beusekom et al, 2010) and a melt factor of 5 mm per degree Celsius per day. The surface melt rate, which typically reaches several cm per day in summer (Ensminger et al, 1999;Reynolds, 2005;Mankoff and Russo, 2013), was treated throughout the 100 m-thick model domain as spatially uniform upward advection. Surface solar radiation 10 downwards from the ERA-interim dataset was used to scale internal heating in the upper, optically translucent part of the glacier following the exponential Lambert Law of light attenuation with e-folding length scale of 0.825 m as constrained by the PAR data ( Fig.…”