Kinect sensor used to weigh astronauts?

It’s no news that Microsoft’s Kinect has come up as a challenge for many computer scientists and researchers who are anxious to expand the motion sensor outside its primary use, Xbox 360. And some of them have some really interesting ideas when it comes to the motion sensor and the camera array built into the device.
                     
Take Carmelo Velardo for example. The computer scientist works at Eurecom, France and has come up with the idea of using Kinect to weigh astronauts in space. Well, that’s surely something many of us haven’t thought of! Not even for a second.

The motion sensor would be used at the International Space Station and would replace the tracking systems that are currently weighing people in space and that are much larger and more complex.

What Velardo did was to team up with the Italian Institute of Technology’s Center for Human Space Robotics in Torino and to create the 3D model of an astronaut using Kinect’s depth-sensing ability. A statistical model that links weight to body measurements was then used by the team to run their calculation.

The estimates are said to be 97% accurate corresponding to an average error of just 2.7 kilograms. The project is believed to be feasible or at least this is what a NASA scientist says. Still, more tests should be made in order to make sure that the tests on Earth hold true in zero gravity.