Kinect Hacked to Weigh Astronauts in Space - bojorqueznothat

Astronauts mightiness soon be able to watch their weight in distance away using a Microsoft Kinect. And atomic number 102, I don't mean that they'll be playacting Kinect Sports and Trip the light fantastic Median. A chemical group of European scientists suffer set up a style to hack a Kinect so it can determine your weight exactly by "looking" at you.

To mensurate weight in microgravity, scientists from Eurecom in Alpes-Maritimes, France and the Italian Institute of Engineering's Center for Human Space Robotics in Torino used the Kinect's ability to produce 3D models and checked it against a database of 28,000 another people, according to New Scientist. The consequent organisation created past this joint project can set a person's weight with 97% accuracy.

If you've ever played a Kinect usage game, you might already know of the depth-sensing camera's ability to cadence body mass exponent and proportions. The scientists used the same figures and ran them through and through a statistical model program that ties dead body measurements to weight. So the computer determines an astronaut weight by comparing their 3D model against a database of other people's measurements.

Measuring your weight is passing important in space, because just few weeks in the nil-gravity environs of blank space can take a massive toll along your dead body. Without the constant quantity tug of sombreness, the human body begins to by nature break down–your muscles atrophy and your bones shrink. To combat the effect, astronauts have to exercise for leastwise 2 hours per twenty-four hours, which could include being tethered to a treadmill OR victimisation a special rig for dead lifting.

Measuring your weighting, however, is a bit more complex when you technically weigh nothing, atomic number 3 is the type in zip-gravity. (What you weigh depends on the amount of gravitational pull your body is subject to; your body's the great unwashed, on the other hand, does not change antitrust because you're in space.)

Astronauts on the International Blank Station use a specialised cheat where the astronauts basically mount themselves happening top a stool on a pogo joint. The stool is raised and lowered repeatedly to determine the amount of mass (in this case, the mass being the spaceman's body) IT is affecting. The system however takes sprouted a lot of room on the space station and requires a lot of power to operate.

The experimental Kinect settled system is sensible as issue and is so small, the researchers told Newfangled Scientist, that information technology could be implemented into the identical walls of a space platform operating theater craft–saving room and muscularity. Thither are no plans to hold the Kinect system tested in space, but the scientists promise to test IT on a parabolic aircraft flight–the so-called Vomiting Comet flights that involves a plane flying upwards and downwards repeatedly to simulate zipp-gravity.

[Eurecom via New Scientist]

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