Video CES 2014: 3-D Scanners are a Logical Next Step After 3-D Printers 87
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A number of companies are either selling or preparing to sell 3-D scanners. Aside from fun (but interesting) uses, like duplicating chess pieces or possibly reproducing a miniature of Rodin's famous sculpture, Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone, Matterform anticipates archeologists reproducing artifacts so that students can study them without handling the precious originals. This video is an interview with Matterform co-founder Drew Cox, who was exhibiting Matterform's scanner at CES 2014. MakerBot is also selling a scanner, as are a growing number of others. In fact, even though Matterform talks about being a low-cost (pre-order price $579) scanner for home use, as opposed to a commercial one that costs thousands. There are also several interesting hand-held scanners out there. Sense sells theirs for $399. Structure has one for $349 that's essentially a peripheral for an iPad. And this is just a random selection from a brief Google search. Use "3-D Scanner" as your search term and you'll find multiple Google pages full of 3-D scanners and information about them -- including software being developed at ETH zurich that turns your smartphone into a 3-D scanner.
3d scanner is a pre-req to Artificial Intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
In the same way, AI needs to be able to digitize something by looking at it. You might thing you want a box to digitize things in, but then what if the box is too small?
I think there are going to be two types of scanners. One scanner will just detect a solid object, and consider it a "wall" until it learns further about that object. The other scanner will be one that determines the colors, dimensions, (maybe even hardness/softness) then tries to pattern match that with known objects in its database so the AI knows what it is looking at. Read more here [botcraft.org]