MatterPort brings 3D reconstruction to the masses with Kinect

With the recent release of the Kinect for Windows hardware and SDK, I thought I’d highlight the cool work my friends Matt Bell and Dave Gausebeck have been doing at MatterPort.  In the early days of Kinect programming in late 2010, countless hobbyists came up with very clever hacks using skeletal tracking to do all sorts of things.  Some of my favorites are augmented reality applications which show people shooting fireballs or lasers from their hands.  Then there’s a whole class of hacks which use the Kinect to control robots or anything with a motor.  Great stuff.

There are far fewer examples of using raw 3D data, like what MatterPort is working on:

In the not so distant past, 3D reconstructions required expensive hardware and rare expertise.  Now anyone with an inexpensive Kinect and MatterPort’s software can capture 3D models in just a few minutes.  Think of the opportunities for real estate agents, sculptors, fashion designers, industrial designers, carpenters, mechanical engineers, and hobbyists of all sorts.  Yes, they’re even working on a hobbyist edition.