ADVANCED 3D SCANNING TECHNOLOGIES

Opening the door to endless possibilities.

Lawrence SchrankManaging Director, Catalysis Consulting GroupBangkok, Thailand085 391 9442Apirdad@gmail.com

History Market development for 3D scanners was a long road…

MENSI was founded in Paris, France in 1987 by Auguste D'Aligny and Michel Paramythioti to develop and market 3D laser scanning technology and 3D modeling software. Mensi was sold to Trimble Navigation Ltd. In 2003

Soisic 1990

Trimble TX5 (2013) ~ 976,000 points per second

Cyra Leica Geosystems

Time of Flight (TOF) Time of flight scanningFirst 6 pico-second chip-- at the time the only one.  6 pico-second because that is the time it takes light to travel 1mm.   Gallium Arsenide circuit.

Cyra 1994Alpha unit

Leica Geosystems 2013. Scan station P20 ~ 1 million points/sec.

Cyra was founded by Ben Kacyra in 1993, acquired by Leica Geosystems in 2001

Major obstacles • Big Data:

Laser scanning has been around since the 60’s.  However, it didn’t break into the engineering realm until the late 80’s.  Laser scanning was one of those technologies that was limited by large polygonal files, limited bandwidth and hard drive storage constraints. Even today, A typical point cloud can be anywhere from 10 to 100 GB’s, rendering most CAD programs inoperable.

How can we use these massive data sets, we need to carry them around on portable hard drives or thumb drives, because the files are too large to email or even FTP. 

If your thinking your files are never going to get that big…just wait, do you remember thinking a 2.0 mega pixel camera was all you would ever need? All of the entry level scanners will increase in accuracies over time, increased resolution means bigger files. So what can be done?

Polygons • Polygon technology was developed a very long time ago for

simulations. This “method” has been used almost exclusively ever since, for many years working with mathematical models in games and CAD but the inefficiency is such that we need multi-billion transistor chips in our desktop PCs to display them. That’s inefficient.

• The immediate problem came with the introduction of real-world 3D scanners, beginning with medical scanners and later laser scanners. And now we’re on the verge of huge 3D models at a very low cost from large numbers of 2D images (Autodesk 123D, Acute3D, etc.)

• The technology developed to handle the huge step increase in complexity, the octree.

• The big advantages. • Used in medicine and laser scanning. • More efficient for 3D printing from scanned data.

Looking for the Answer

• I needed to find answers to this question 20 years ago and finally came across a scientist who was doing some truly original thinking on a special US government program. What he came up with was revolutionary. Spatially sorting the 3D universe, think of an alphabet for 3D space. He named this method octrees.

• Dr. Donald Meagher founder of (Octree Corp.) • Don has developed these technologies over the last 20

years, and is the most experienced pioneer in this field.• Don is the Yoda of real world scanning and 3D methods

.

What is an Octree?

 • An 8-way branching hierarchical tree structure representing the

spatial occupancy of a modeled solid resulting from a regular recursive power-of-two subdivision of a finite cubical (or rectangular) universe.

• In other words, it’s an advanced form of volumetric representation.• Important characteristics• –      spatially sorted (for efficient processing)• –      hierarchical (use “coarse-to-fine” strategies)• –      number of nodes is O(surface area) of solid• –      multi-resolution• –      most operations use simple arithmetic (+, -, shift, etc.)

Octree Representation

1 2 3 40 765

1 2 3 40 765

1 2 3 40 765

4 55

3

3

16 776

2

7

X

Y

Z Labeling of Octants

Root Node(level 0)

level 1

level 2

Universe

CT data using Octrees

Growth of the industry• Laser scanning started out much the same as GPS

(Global Positioning Systems).  In the early days GPS, was a technology only military personnel, surveyors, pilots had ever heard of GPS.  Now GPS is incorporated into millions of devices, including our computers, cars and phones.  Surveyors, Engineers  and Architects are now working with 3D Laser scanning, but soon it will infiltrate many other areas of our lives. “Xbox Kinnect” is a form of laser scanning. Matterform will be shipping there under $600 product soon, these low cost systems are going to be everywhere.

3D Biometrics• 3D scanners were critical in high end biometric

development, ( 3D facial recognition) several existed but all were somewhat limited in speed, range and accuracy.

• US National security interests pushed the development once again.

• The ultimate sensor would be capable of human recognition at 100 meters, provide 1-2 mm spatial resolution…while the subject was running.

• We solved the 2 million point per second problem with octrees…

Next Generation scanning

• 3D flash LIDAR• Raytheon system 2 million points a sec

• http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/photon2009/presentations/cottingame.pdf

Where are the opportunities• Major considerations:• Think outside the box about new customers• Keep an eye on the 3D scanning world…• 3D printing is local, and because of this more than ever before we can consider

localized needs and solutions.• The advent of lower cost higher accuracies for rapid proto-typing changes the

calculus of international development. • Our company Om+ has focused on technical development directed at the

emerging markets. The problem is that the technologies needed in rural areas are dismissed using traditional metrics due to the fact that profit calculations are based on the perceived ability of the customers to pay for the R&D and follow-on products.

• Do you look at rural communities, the hundreds of thousands of poor farmers with huge needs not being customers…think again!

• Think about PPP …(Public Private Partnerships)• Time for out of the box model?• PPP’s are the new model for well funded NGO’s

PPP’s• Governments such as Lao, Cambodia, Myanmar, are ready to

team with NGO’s technologies companies, engineers and inventors in cooperation with 3D printing community need to work together to solve real life issues that concern rural customers.

• There are development funds available for solutions coming from NGO’s and National programs. ( look at the published goals for the reduction of Co2 emissions and alternative energy for example)

• Real tangible results can be gained as these groups work to develop unique products.

• This type of development has been largely ignored, but due to the pressing influence of ASEAN the willingness of these governments to fund new programs is at an all-time high.

For those corporate firms considering entering this market…

VC’s

Investors

• Here is a tip:• Do your due diligence, there is a lot of hype and

Vaporware out there. Invest in OSINT (Open Source Intelligence tools) for your own research, take a look at Gister Pro by Visual purple. It like Google on Steroids.

• As a guy who did technical due diligence for the top law firm in the silicon Valley, it’s a smart investment.

Why should the 3D printing industry be interested in advanced scanning technology? • Because of the impact of having commercially available

3D cameras on a chip means cheap 3D cameras will replace all 2D cameras eventually..

• Because your not really in the 3D printing business, but your part of something much bigger. The world of making solids from data, both designed data and “real world” data

A Brave new World?• Why should everyone pay attention to the advances in 3D sensor/scanning technologies?

• It will be the fundamental leverageable technology driving hundreds of products and service over the next 10-20 years.

• It will be developed for military and security applications and identification (biometrics) • It will be used for banking and all manner of human authentication• Enable perfect manufacturing technologies with no need for oxygen, light or heat. (no need for outsourcing) • These application are going to create opportunities for countless businesses

• Think about fully measurable video, 3D plus time = 4D, how can it be used, and miss used?

• The explosion of limitless high resolution content/data, regardless of physical size is not many years away…

• The eyes of the machine are being built as we speak…• This is bigger than the internet…• Billions of dollars will be made by those who take the time to grasp this…and the future of our grandchildren

will be determined by our collective morality to use it properly.

• Are you ready?