There seems to be no end in sight (thankfully) for Kinect hacks. One of the cooler ones to cross my attention recently is this quadcopter that can fly autonomously in environments where GPS signals are unavailable, while making a 3D color map of its surroundings. Using the onboard Kinect sensor, it actually maps, and examines the maps to navigate, simultaneously.
The project is a joint effort by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and University of Washington’s Robotics and States Estimation Laboratory. The system is totally self-contained so this little quadcopter can go anywhere to make its surveys.
What do you think? Is this the next generation of Google Street View we’re looking at here?
