Optical Trick Inspired By Blue Morpho Butterfly

http://www.fastcompany.com/biomimicry/never-before-seen-optical-trick-creates-ultra-secure-cash

3D map of dark matter (by Hubble)

http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-3d-map-universe-dark-matter.html

Augmented reality, a vision of the future

http://vimeo.com/8569187

Interesting to see here, that augmented reality is used for advertising (on a massive scale), and only a little bit of useful information.

But this is only a utopia. Maybe it will really be used to gather and visualize information about ancient buildings, and old churches in town..

Entertainment videos

What Earth would look like with rings like Saturn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoz5Q2rGQtQ

Simply amazing.. but we still have a wonder: total eclipse.

So you dont have to envy Saturnians..

(And since total eclipse is a rare event, it is affecting our imagination much more.

Having rings would be nice, but total eclipse is a more arcane something..)

CIA laser listener:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylo72DyapVY

The problem with Discovery channel is, that most of the time it's entertaining, but if it is about your field, sometimes it sounds ridiculous. So, if it's entertaining: maybe you don't understand something. It has to be popular, so they are colouring stories.

A friend of mine from the field of biology told me, that the pictures about oceanic life are really wonderful (even though most of these were shot in aquariums), but often they say misleading sentences about those beautiful fishes. I'm simply enjoying it, but he can tell the mistakes.

(Even worst, if you're watching it dubbed, not in English: once I heard the "those tanks ran on mine" phrase translated with the meaning of "mine" as in "goldmine."

First I did not understand: what? Those tanks were driving on a mine? Then I figured, they said in the dubbed version "goldmine" instead of "landmine." I can't believe no one spotted it at the dubbing studio, but it still has happened.)

So it's good for entertaining, but if you want information: go there and see with your own eyes!

The Third & The Seventh

CG video:

http://vimeo.com/7809605

Norway skies not kept clear

This time again, it wasn't from the future, nor from other planet:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/09/awesomely-bizarre-light-show-freaks-out-norway/

Always knowing where is north

This little unit makes you able to know where is north all the time:

There is something (especially in male humans) called senso dell'orientamento (in Italian), which does exactly that. Knowing where is north.

However, it's quite easy to follow the directions, if you enter a square building. But there are situations (more than you can imagine!) where your 'direction-sense' will betray you.

Normally you don't even need that sense, so you'll just ignore the failure, or wouldn't even notice it.

But if you drive a few miles on a serpentine road on a shady day, or you enter the underground, and travel a few stations, you'll be surprised.. With this machine you could be more aware of the direction.

However, a few years back I've already read about a similar experiment, and the result was the same: the experimenter was surprised. (So this team just reinvented the compass.)

I'm sure that these kind of augmented reality (or augmented perception) devices wont be mainstream soon, but there are some fields, where it could be useful.

(For instance: navy, rescue teams, pilots, hikers, and maybe geographers.)

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/my-new-sense-organ

MilkScanner

This one is tough: the milkscanner.
Really great idea, however, it's hard to imagine its industrial use due to lack of precision. But it's really cool, and compelling that 3D scanning is available to even larger groups.
http://milkscanner.moviesandbox.net/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Milkscanner-V1.0/

LiDAR intensity correction

The second LiDAR intensity paper ..... here we find new information about topographic and distance effects.

Next time I write about photogrammetric and LiDAR integration opportunities. Very interesting research area!


TOPOGRAPHIC AND DISTANCE EFFECTS IN LASER SCANNER INTENSITY
CORRECTION
S. Kaasalainen, A. Vain, A. Krooks, A. Kukko

"ABSTRACT:
The effect of incidence angle on the intensity of laser backscatter has been studied in photonics and optics, but the applications of these results to remote sensing of natural land targets are limited, as well as the availability of experimental validation data for airborne and terrestrial laser scanning, where the incidence angle correction using the Lambertian scattering law is common. We have investigated the role of topographic (incidence angle) and distance effects in the radiometric calibration of monostatic terrestrial and airborne laser scanner data. Our results show that the Lambertian (cosine) correction is practically valid at incidence angles up to 20º, whereas at greater angles of incidence, the accuracy of data is still very limited to estimate the performance of any correction method. We also discuss the mixed effects of distance and target reflectance on terrestrial laser scanner intensity calibration, for which the number of applications is constantly increasing. As there are differences in the intensity detectors of different instruments, it is important that the effects of distance and target reflectance are well defined before using any terrestrial laser scanner in intensity
measurement.


SUMMARY

At the current levels of accuracy of ALS intensity data, the cosine correction of the incidence angle effect works reasonably well for most surfaces, even in the cases that the surface could not be approximated to be Lambertian. Together with earlier results (Kukko et al., 2008), it can be concluded that for most targets the incidence angle effect is practically within the error limits of the data at incidence angles up to about 20°. The computational cosine effect is about 6% in this range, which is well in the error limits of the intensity data produced by current ALS instruments (this is clearly seen in Fig. 5 and Kaasalainen et al., 2009a). It must also be taken into account that some surfaces may present a specular reflection at 0° (normal incidence), which may cause a peak in the intensity at this angle. More data with better accuracy than that provided by the current airborne scanners would be needed in cases where the incidence angle is greater than 20°, to be able to distinguish any difference between surfaces for which the Lambertian approximation does or does not work adequately. The intensity and distance effects in TLS are mixed, at least for some scanners. A further study on distance effects in TLS is in progress, with a comparison with data from other instruments (Kaasalainen et al., 2009b). This is particularly important in the applications where TLS are used in mobile (vehicle based) mapping systems and other (stationary) applications, where the distance of the target varies in a large scale. It is important that the detector effects are well known (to provide a correction scheme) before using any terrestrial laser scanner in intensity measurement."