For me the interesting part is integrating SLAM with the object recognition and building semantics on top of that. Can you use the relatively powerful situation calculus to give the robot objectives? They seems to suggest this might be the case. For anyone with a Kinect and a fair bit of patience, you can try out an RGBDSlam algorithm for yourself (http://wiki.ros.org/rgbdslam).

Of topic, but I have no idea how you can end up with a major in math if you don't take the subjects you listed. I'm pretty sure I did all of those subjects in my undergrad (and ended up with a major in math) but still wouldn't call myself a mathematician!

The Google engineer who built the LAN house started a similar project. His blog describes what options he found out in the wild. http://kentonsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/01/mass-scanning.html

Re-reading my post, its probably a little harsh. I should clarify that the above is entirely my opinion, based on my personal experiences working for other partners in another firm (albeit in the same field). I have no personal experience of how the lawyers or firm mentioned above operate.

I should also add that, on re-reading the letter, its probably less threatening than it sounds. Most of the language suggests that they are just covering their bases and not waiving any rights, rather than signalling an actual intent to recover costs from the researcher. Hopefully his good deed does in fact go unpunished, and this all blows over.

In a previous life I worked for an Australian law firm in their financial services division (not Maged's firm thank god). From Maged's profile you can clearly see he is an expert in superannuation law http://www.minterellison.com/People/maged_girgis/. I can say, with 99% certainty, that he has no practical experience in how section 308H of the Crimes Act and section 478.1 of the Criminal Code Act work. I don't claim to either. But the modus operandi of these law firms is that when a big client comes in with a weird request they get a junior lawyer (or crack team of junior lawyers if the billing is low for that month) who doesn't know much about anything to do some "research" and draft a threatening letter based on a few hours of reading some textbooks and legal databases.

It is possible that the fund does have a right to recover "costs incurred" under pure contract law, although you would have to read the terms and conditions of whatever product Mr Jarrett has with the fund very carefully. But I would think they should be more worried with Mr Jarrett reporting them to the Australian Privacy Commissioner for breach of the privacy principles in relation to the funds obligations to keep personal information secure. I also wouldn't rule out a breach of standards set by APRA (Australia's banking regulator).

Another funny thing to note is that at the rates which Minter Ellison charges, the cost of getting Maged's junior lawyer to write that letter is likely to be far more than the cost of any actions the trustee of the Fund actually needed to take to deal with the problem!

I could go on, but I'm worried they might track me down and start sending me random threats and try to access my computer.