DIY Lab has put up some plans that will allow you to use your webcam as a rangefinder. I wonder if the technique used is similar to the golf green distance estimators?
"Convert your webcam into a modern range estimation tool without any hardware. The math is very simple, so this new technique works very well for vision applications that need to run quickly. With a simple height estimation, the program will easily calculate the range to a distant object with high precision. The software will be next upgraded with motion detection."
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Next stage would be a port to camara equipped mobile phones
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Exactly the same as the “golf green distance estimators”. “Simple height estimation”. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? This would be a great application for the iPhone. You could be a thousandaire!
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miked, this is the good 2500 years old pythagorean theorem at work. You can accomplish the same result with a ruler and a piece of string, both of known length. It’s an old trick I was taught in the army and should be easy to find on the net.
Anyway, to get enough precision you always need to have a rough estimate of the subject height. I believe this wasn’t done before on phones probably because of their terrible optics and the resulting distortion that would reduce the calculations precision.
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i meant why hasn’t it been done on a computer before. i understand how it was done.
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I am moved to comment by miked’s first post: “You could be a thousandaire!”
Yes, you could, just like most other dot com boomers 😉