Take 2 or more photographs from different perspectives of an object or a scene, Microsoft Photosynth can build a realistic 3-dimension model of the object or scene. This is what Michael Bruch of the DoD demonstrated at the Robo Development Conference. The 3D reconstruction could then be used in visualization or simulation, such as training a robot to manuever thru real life obstacles.
Photosynth is usually presented as a way to stitch together photographs so you can get a more emersive 3D experience from 2D photos. The photographs could even come from different sources on the internet, so there are potentially leveraging and social aspects.
Photosynth is computational intensive, so could be a good application for the compute cloud.
To me, Photosynth demonstrates a converging application of the storage cloud, compute cloud, and the processing of the data to derive meaning. The derivation of meaning from data is called out by Tim O’Reilly as a key to success of an internet endeavor.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Waiming Mok
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