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DAVID Freeware Laser Range Scanning
DAVID is a freeware program that allows anyone with a PC, a webcam, a background corner and a laser to create three-dimensional scan of an object.
(DAVID 3D scanning set-up)
Start by calibrating the corner background; then put your object in front of it. One great money-saver with DAVID is that you can just hold the laser source in your hand.
The special thing about our solution is that you freely hold the laser in your hand, "brushing" the laser line over the object. Meanwhile the computer automatically calculates 3D coordinates of the scanned object surface.
The system shows your "brush strokes" with the laser (see screen shot below after 15 seconds of scanning). (Note that this is not the bust of Beethoven shown above.)
(DAVID 3D scan results)
After post-filtering, you see something a bit clearer.
(DAVID 3D scanning set-up)
The finished image can be rotated and is complete, if you succeeded in brushing the entire object with the laser. I'm assuming that you may need to turn the object around and repeat the process and combine the images to get a complete 360 degree view.
(DAVID 3D scan post-filtered)
I was fascinated by the description of the process as "brushing" the object with a laser. In Jack Vance's 1964 novel The Houses of Iszm, the paranoid Iszic would put every visitor to their planet through an exacting biometric identification system.
"On the gray disk, Farr Sainh - palms forward, eyes wide."He stood rigid as feeler-planes brushed down his body. In a glass dome a three-dimensional simulacrum of himself six inches high took form. Farr inspected it sourly.
(Read more about feeler-planes)
The feeler-planes were capable of producing a three-dimensional model detailed right down to the fingerprints - the tri-type record.
Read more about the DAVID Laserscanner 3D image software via VCTB.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/25/2007)
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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