Communications of the ACM
3-D Scanning Mobile App Makes It Easier to 3-D Print
Microsoft Research scientist Zhiwei Li uses a mobile phone to take a scan of colleague Richard Cai's head.
Credit: Jiawei Gu / Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research has developed a mobile app designed to make it easier and less expensive to create and print three-dimensional (3-D) content. The app is designed to build a digital 3-D model based on imagery gathered from panning a mobile phone around an object. The software works by sending the scan of the object to the cloud for construction into a 3-D shape. About 30 seconds later, the scan is sent back to the mobile phone, and the user will have an opportunity to save it or send it to a 3-D printer.
"If you have scanned somebody's face, you can print out a cup with the face, for yourself or as a gift for a friend," says Microsoft Research scientist Jiawei Gu. "If you go to a furniture store and see something nice, you can use a mobile phone to scan the furniture and put it into your home environment to see if it would fit."
As 3-D printing becomes more popular, people will want to recreate objects they encounter, Gu says. "If we can find an easy way for common users to create 3-D content by themselves, we can imagine that, in the next five years, everybody will be able to create 3-D content," he says.
From Gigaom.com
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