Thursday, November 26, 2015
The best portable 3D scanner is about to get way more precise
The Verge: Occipital, the maker of the Structure Sensor, has acquired a company called Lynx Laboratories, one that launched its own mobile 3D scanner on Kickstarter a few years ago. The Lynx staff will join Occipital at its headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. But more importantly, Occipital now has access to algorithms developed by Lynx that make 3D depth mapping far more accurate than ever before — algorithms that will make the Structure Sensor even better.
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6 comments:
I wish I had one of these. I would scan everything. For the last few years it had kind of felt like technology was slowing down on this front so it is cool to see such a huge jump (assuming that the numbers are all real). What would be really cool though (in the far flung future of this technology) is a scanner good enough to give you a 3D vector drawing. Imagine if you could plop a couple scanners in a theater and get an accurate 3D CAD drafting of the theater. Well that would be our use for it at CMU anyway. I would want to design my perfect house starting with an existing house I have in mind. So I could scan it in and edit it until it was just right. You could even build a databse for people that way. Scan in a bunch of different types of houses, find one the client kind of likes, work with them to edit it until its what they want. There are so many possibilities once we get the software worked out.
This technology is fascinating and I wish I had it for some of the projects I’ve worked on this year. My interest in it is not in reproducing an object (or house) on a 3D printer, but rather using it to capture and create a 3D drawing/drafting of an object. There are so many strange (and sometimes manufactured/built) pieces of hardware that are used in theater that it would be incredibly helpful and time saving to be able to simply scan and object to use in a drawing. While there are a multitude of 3D objects available for drafting, it often seems the case that the one thing you need doesn’t exist. All that being said, it seems that this technology is currently more for the homeowner and hobbyist than professional. Even with an accuracy of ¼”, it isn’t accurate enough for most professional applications. I’m sure it will get to an incredible amount of accuracy…eventually.
I've wondered where 3D scanning was in it's development process, and this is some very exciting news. There are so many applications for 3D scanning, and those are just things that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure that there is a ton more that engineers are going to be able to do across all scientific fields. I'm sure that this kind of technology will work wonders in the healthcare industries, scanning peoples bodies and developing custom implants of all kinds to advance modern prosthetic techniques as well as orthodontal techniques, which relies heavily on the use of impressions. I'm wondering if the people developing this tech are relying on it being modern as a way to get the public to support it rather than reaching out in an attempt to get grants, but I also worry that that process might be limiting.
This technology is going to be awesome, and going to let us do some really cool stuff when its really widely distributed. But doesn’t this whole movement seem kind of backward in terms of technological development? Why are we spending so much more effort making scanners that can make 3D models of the things we’ve built rather than putting in the forethought and having a model before we build something. As a culture of makers and developers, why arnt we making a 3D model of everything that we build, why aren’t houses, buildings, cars, furniture, our appliances all available in model form? I cannot doubt the necessity of computer vision technology in any virtual or augmented reality system, but, shouldn’t we be doing better as a culture in making the things we make before we make them?
I can't wait for this technology to be refined and well supported. I can't even imagine all the possible uses we would have for a table mounted 3d scanner that's precise down to a 1/4". And that's todays resolution, a year from now it could a 1/16".
Okay so now I'm excited, I'll list every possible use for this technology I can think of.
On site venue surveys. Cut to fit survey, so when you go back to the shop to make the one thing fit at load in, you have precise data. Furniture scanning at a store for replication by the props department. Most accurate costume fitting you can ever imagine. Facial imaging for masks and prosthetics. Archiving of shop build mechanisms that you want to document, but can't save.
All sorts of possibilities with this technology. I can't wait to see where portable 3D scanning goes.
Wow, this is really exciting. I can just imagine now being able to take one of these 3D scanners into the Chosky and getting accuracte 3d CADs down to 1/4" accuracy. Now that would be pretty freaking sweet. I can't say I am familiar with this company specifically, but I am familiar with the concept of 3d Scanners. It is exciting that more companies are producing these products at a scale such that they are suitable not only for scanning small models, but for scanning entire rooms and buildings. Yet at the same time of all these advances in scanning, I can't help but agree with Chris. I'd rather have an existing drawing of a space or thing than scan it in with an amazing scanner. I would rather focus on having people draw good 3d models of things they come up with, than 3d Scan them in after the fact. It would be super cool to see 3d modeling and CAD become more accessible to developers, designers, and makers of all levels. Then maybe when their computer crashes and they lose all their files, they can get a 3d scanner to clean up the mess...
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