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Technology

Clouds add depth to computer landscapes

16 June 2010

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Hidden depths

(Image: Matthew Taylor/Millennium)

CLOUDS are not normally a boon for image-processing algorithms because their shadows can distort objects in a scene, making them difficult for software to recognise.

However, and colleagues at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, are making shadows work for them, helping them to create a depth map of a scene from a single camera.

“The shadows clouds cast create a depth map of a scene from one camera, a notoriously difficult task”

Depth maps record the geography of a 3D landscape and represent it in 2D for surveillance and atmospheric monitoring. They…

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