A dedicated program for the detection of KBOs has been developed in Taiwan: The Taiwan American Occultation Survey (TAOS) team deploys a set of small telescopes along a 7 km east-west baseline . These robotic 50 cm telescopes equipped with CCD cameras will automatically monitor 3000 stars. They expect to detect 10 to thousands of events per year (see http://www.taos.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw).
Another possible tool to explore the Kuiper belt is the space satellite COROT, a French mission of CNES dedicated to asteroseismology and studies of exoplanets by transit: For this, Corot will perform high precision photometric observation of several thousands of stars with a 25 cm telescope equipped with CCD cameras. The two fields, corresponding to the two program have slightly different optics. The two main programs will record continuously the same fields for 6 periods of 5 months, separated by one month periods which can be used for complementary programs. The asteroseismology program will record a few very bright stars with an acquisition frequency of 1 Hz. The number of KBOs detected during this program will be limited by the large size and the small number of stars. With the above hypothesis concerning the KBO's size distribution, the detection rate will vary from one to one hundred per month, depending on the direction of observation. KBOs larger than 200 meters can be detected. The extrasolar planets program will record thousands of stars. However, the minimum integration time will be 30 seconds. Hence the detection rate will be limited to 0.5 to 50 per month and the smallest detectable KBO will be 1 km. A program dedicated to the research of KBOs would record 100 stars with a frequency of 1 Hz and could detect 250 events per day. A one month program could determine the spatial distribution and the size distribution of the objects [Roques 1999].