A new video has surfaced demonstrating the Microsoft Kinect used as an augmented reality sandbox. Using the depth capabilities of the Kinect, along with a projector, a sand pit is turned into a virtual environment with a real-time colored topographic map.
"Video of a sandbox equipped with a Kinect 3D camera and a projector to project a real-time colored topographic map with contour lines onto the sand surface. The sandbox lets virtual water flow over the surface using a GPU-based simulation of the Saint-Venant set of shallow water equations. We built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as Lawrence Hall of Science or the Tahoe Environmental Research Center," the video description reads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JXtTj0mzE#ws (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JXtTj0mzE#ws)
We (the UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences, http://www.keckcaves.org (http://www.keckcaves.org)) built this for an NSF-funded project on informal science education. These AR sandboxes will be set up as hands-on exhibits in science museums, such as the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) or Lawrence Hall of Science.
Project home page: http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox (http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox)
The sandbox is based on the original idea shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7YVqyudiE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7YVqyudiE)
The water flow simulation is based on the work of Kurganov and Petrova, "a second-order well-balanced positivity preserving central-upwind scheme for the Saint-Venant system."
source: I Started Something