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A New Scan For 3D Printing And Augmented Reality

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Typically, after he finishes scanning a room with the Structure Sensor, a 3D scanner for mobile devices, Jeff Powers, chief executive officer of Occipital (the company behind Structure), gets a strong reaction from the audience.

“People yell at us: You didn’t actually make it (the finished scan) that fast,” he says. The fast motif seems to have carried over to his company Occipital’s Kickstarter campaign, which raked up $100,000 (their goal) in less than 3.5 hours.

“Our goal is to raise 2.5 million and be number one in the technology category of Kickstarter,” says Adam Rodnitzky, director of marketing at the San Francisco-based startup.

The Structure Sensor is product number three for Occipital.

After selling RedLaser - a mobile shopping and scanning application - to eBay, Powers, who co-founded the company after quitting his doctorate program at the University of Michigan, started work on Structure eighteen months ago. Several iterations and a headcount increase from five to thirteen people at Occipital later, the 3D scanner is ready. The results show.

Within a frame consisting of anodised aluminium, Structure includes a traditional camera (to detect and click images) and Infrared emitters (to assign depth and color to points within a given image).

It has a PrimeSense Carmine sensor, which, in case you didn’t know, is the same sensor used in Microsoft ’s Kinect devices. The scanner can be mounted onto an iPad with custom brackets (supplied with the scanner) and works through iOS and OSx applications. According to Powers, the company intends to release open source Android drivers soon.

At first glance, the 3D scanner might seem like an extension of the 3D printing ecosystem. However, Rodnitzky and Powers plan to develop their scanner as a platform (Think Google Glass). “The priority, for us, is to develop a critical mass of developers so that buyers have content when they purchase our sensor,” explains Powers. They have already released a developer kit for their device.

The developer kit would especially be helpful to developers planning on using the device to develop augmented reality applications. Typically, augmented reality refers to an enhanced (and, sometimes, fantastic) vision of reality.

However, Structure’s vision of augmented reality is more practical: It consists of virtual objects interacting with real objects. Consider, for example, the device’s utility in designing interiors. Typically, such a task requires a combination of imagination and spatial discrimination capabilities. For example, you cannot place an object in a specific corner without analyzing the space requirements and imagining it effect on the surrounding ecosystem. Structure crystallizes these imaginings into visualizations by enabling designers to see how a given ecosystem would function with specific objects. “For those, who are not good at interior designing or imagining rooms with typical setups,, this can be a useful tool,” says Powers.

As a tribute to its roots (it was conceptualized during a gaming experience), Powers says the application has multiple uses in innovative games. For example, it can be used to keep a virtual pet in the home. “For people who live somewhere, where they cannot have a pet, this can be a pretty useful experience,” says Powers.

Because the scanner has substantial accuracy for close scans (upto 40 cms), Powers says the device can be used in medical applications.

Both Powers and Rodnitzky do not discount the device’s capability to expand the 3D printing content ecosystem. The device connects directly to the Shapeways site and prints objects from its 3D scans in formats that are acceptable by 3D printers.

“The scanner democratizes 3D printing,” says Rodnitzky. “It is great for our (Kickstarter) backers who don’t have a 3D printer,” adds Powers. Occipital is also partnering with Shapeways for an exhibition in New York City next month. Their device will enable attendees to scan and 3D print images and figurines of themselves and each other. “We can totally see a scan of the bride and a groom and a 3D print of their images on a wedding cake,” laughs Powers.

However, he admits that the Structure Sensor is limited as far as designing custom iPhone cases is concerned. "It (the final scan) will be decent but not as good as the original drawing," he says.