NASA to Start Helping Detectives 78
Roland Piquepaille writes "With a new photographic laser device developed to check damages on the Space Shuttle, NASA is going to help the FBI to investigate crime scenes. The Laser Scaling and Measurement Device for Photographic Images (LSMDPI) was designed to provide a non-intrusive means of adding a scale to a photograph, which is very useful when looking at an object in space when there is no size reference. But the LSMDPI, which weighs only a half-pound and can be attached directly to a camera's tripod, will also be used on Earth in crime and accident scene investigations. It also could be used for oil and chemical tank monitoring or aerial photography."
Minime, we do not hump the "laser" (Score:2, Insightful)
This pattern appears in the photograph along with the image of the object under investigation, enabling the viewer to measure the size of the object
This will take pornography to a new level!
Seriously though, this seems like a very neat idea. It's like embedding a topographical map within a photo to give it a more 3 dimensional perspective.
I really think this technology would apply very well to image recognition applications. I'm thinking of the recent article on China's facial recognition surveillan [slashdot.org]
Re:Minime, we do not hump the "laser" (Score:2)
WARNING: Do not look directly into LASER with remaining eye.
Re:Minime, we do not hump the "laser" (Score:2)
A Match Made In Heaven (Score:1, Troll)
He's a world-weary FBI investigator with depth perception issues. She's a feisty NASA electrical design engineer armed with twin lasers. They fight crime!
(Don't like mine? Make your own [epix.net]!)
Re:A Match Made In Heaven (Score:2)
NSA to start helping detectives? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:NSA to start helping detectives? (Score:2)
Re:NSA to start helping detectives? (Score:1)
Re:NSA to start helping detectives? (Score:2)
NASA funding and Security (Score:2)
Re:NSA to start helping detectives? (Score:1)
There is no place to hide... (Score:2)
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:3, Insightful)
NASA should really have a PR campaign highlighting everything we take fro granted that came from space research.
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:1)
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:2)
Actaully I agree with you for the most part. I'm thinking of scientific research in general terms here. As far as i know, NASA does not do everything in house, it diverts enourmous mounts of work to the private sector. For example, consider the moonlanders were made by Grumman not NASA. They were working for NASA. So your point about money going to NASA vs the private sector is not valid since there is no clear distinction between t
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:2)
That's funny, but no one has ever asked me to invest money in NASA before. The government just kind of took the money away from me, without giving me a choice.
So, how do I sell my shares? How can I opt out of purchasing any more shares? Is NASA goi
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:2)
Re:That's actually a good point (Score:2)
The drag is that NASA also has a mandate to try to make money with the tools they develop. NASA scientists developed a great image analysis program called VISAR back in 1996 [rti.org] to clean up video for the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing. Since then, they've been trying to sell it to companies. To my knowledge, this has never appeared in a consumer-priced product - only in a $100k+ system to be sold to big police departments, the FBI/CIA and big casinos.
I can never justify the megabucks Intergraph system [intergraph.com], nor can t
Re:There is no place to hide... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:There is no place to hide... (Score:2)
Then you are most likely playing Golf in Space. [slashdot.org]
Re:There is no place to hide... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Except... (Score:2)
NOT indoors (Score:2)
Liberal hand wringing in 4... 3... (Score:1)
I wonder how long it will take for All Franken to start whining about this on his radio show, annoying both his listeners as he whimpers about what a misuse of technology this is, and what a horrible miscarriage of justice it entails.
Re:Liberal hand wringing in 4... 3... (Score:2)
iCamera... (Score:2)
Re:iCamera... (Score:2)
Re:iCamera... (Score:2)
Re:iCamera... (Score:2)
Or proxima semana, if it's not that urgent.
Re:iCamera... (Score:1)
one of their tools (Score:2)
Friggen lazers (Score:1)
Then a shark will swallow it and we'll see friggen sharks with friggen lazers that measure friggen distances.
LSMDPI:
Laser
Sharks
Make
Damn
People
Inpotent
THINK ABOUT IT
SHARKS WITH A FRIGGEN LASER THAT MEASURES SCALE!!!
Re:Friggen lazers (Score:1)
Is it just me... (Score:2)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)
Whether or not this deserved to be on the front page is another issue. Hey, its a Roland Piquepaille story, so why not?
The street will find its own uses for technology (Score:1)
Great. "CSI: Low Earth Orbit" (Score:3, Funny)
which will become (Score:2)
matter of scale (Score:3, Funny)
I can just see the new spam now:
Want your equipment to look bigger from space?
try SeeAlice today...
LSMDPI gets used on it's first FBI case (Score:2)
yet another useful spinoff (Score:2)
Could very well create in industry that pays more in taxes then it cost to develop. Like so many other spinoffs.
Re:yet another useful spinoff (Score:2)
Sure, NASA research can produce useful spinoffs... but so could just researching the spinoff technologies directly (and probably much more efficently). We spend how many billions on space travel? And we get a laser measurement system? That could just have easily been developed by the private sector for a fraction of the cost. Bahh, this is pure propoganda in order to drum up funding. "Look, our NASA technology has civilian uses too! Isn't this wonderful! So
Replace a $1 ruler with... "lasers" (Score:4, Interesting)
This kind of thingy is somewhat less useful and accurate than a "ruler" in the picture:
Re:Replace a $1 ruler with... "lasers" (Score:2)
That was never the point. The point is that you don't have to disrupt the crime scene to get your measurements now. When evidence is microscopic, that can be extremely important.
Rulers and tape measures can be used to measure other things, that lasers can't- like skew distances, or circumferences.
Once you've got a scale in a digital image, you can measure curves to your heart's content in software, without distrurbing the crime scene.
Red laser lig
Re:Replace a $1 ruler with... "lasers" (Score:2)
Yup! (Score:1)
Of course you expoy them while they are aligned. We do this with their dots at 2 1/2". This setup gives very accurate measurements well over 40' (that is, beyond the point at which you can even really see i
Re:Replace a $1 ruler with... "lasers" (Score:1)
I actually helped with some of the development of this product, so let me clear up a few questions:
You have to calibrate the laser dot spacing against a ruler anyway, so you don't save the cost or weight of carrying around a ruler.
The lasers are coaligned in their case and are calibrated at manufacture to be exactly one inch apart up to a distance of roughly 20 feet. Each unit is tested before it goes out the door.
The calibration is only good at ONE distance and perpendicular to the lasers
The la
Aaargh! (Score:1)
Not exactly a new idea... (Score:2)
Re:Not exactly a new idea... (Score:1)
Supporting and Supplimentary data. (Score:2)
Its not quite a new concept, but I'd really like to see this, along with other technolgies, implemented into my plain old digital camera (PODC)
I think a lot of people could benefit from knowing the scale of images taken with their camera.... More useful, howerver, would be if the laser beams used an i
cue Austin Ppowers (Score:2)
But...! (Score:2)
Answer to NASA's funding problems (Score:1)
Re:Answer to NASA's funding problems (Score:2)
Why doesn't the government trademark the flag and licence that too?
Go right.... stop... (Score:1)
Roland the Plogger (Score:2)
It's not much of a technology. That's called "structured light", and it's been used for years in industrial computer vision systems. It's one of the simplest ways to measure depth in an image.
It's not even new to law enforcement. Here's a PowerPoint presentation [geradts.com] on using it to look at stamped logos in pills. This is from a 2004 conference in Dallas.
More technical information (Score:1)
Good for scientific research too! (Score:1)
SI units defined! (Score:2)
So NASA is still operating in non-metric units, they created a laser measuring device which TFA suggests is measured with software outputting non-metric units though we don't know if they use the decimal system or say 1/16 inch, they had to be requested to add SI (systeme internati
Wasn't this thing used on TV... (Score:1)
Used on submarines (Score:2)