Communications of the ACM
Speedy Scanner Re-Writes Book on Publishing Technology
Tokyo University's prototype system is able to scan the flipping pages of an average 200-250 page book in a little over 60 seconds.
Credit: IEEE Spectrum
Simply flipping through a book may not seem like the best to way to scan it, but a Japanese research group at Tokyo University has created new software that allows hundreds of pages to be scanned within minutes.
Scanning paper is normally a tedious process with each page having to be inserted into a flat-bed scanner, but the team led by professor Masatoshi Ishikawa use a high speed camera that takes 500 pictures a second to scan pages as they are flipped.
The new scanner being developed is able to deal with the fact that pages that are being flipped are normally deformed in some fashion. "It takes a shot of the shape, then it calculates the shape and uses those calculations to film the scanning," Ishikawa says.
The current system is able to scan an average 200-250 page book in a little over 60 seconds using basic computer hardware that is available off-the-shelf.
View a video of the book flipping scanning system in action.
From Reuters
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