Bat Sonar:

I first wanted to reference some of the more natural types of 3D scanning. This being the sonar system that bats use. The bats are using specific frequencies which send high pitch sound waves outwards and wait for receiving the echo. The interesting fact is that the frequencies that bats send and receive are so frequent and complicated, much more complicated than the brain should be able to process. But science theorizes that the bats are able to slow down the processing of the wavelengths to understand the patterns specifically.

Multi-Kinect Scanning:

Secondly is a project I worked on last semester with Jonathan Armistead. Below is posted a video of the system we used to do full body scans. The scanner was developed for “professional” use in a medical facility. But in actuality the scanning system is utilizing multiple kinect cameras. The system is impressive because important to the system was that all 8 kinects would grab and record point cloud data at the same exact time. The system then outputs 4 separate point clouds.

In terms of process, I was hired by Jonathan to help align the point clouds using meshlabs to align the multiple scans. The workflow involves taking multiple pieces of the scan, rotating pieces into near perfect alignment, and then having the computer guess and rotate the pieces the rest of the way. (overall a very tedious process). Afterwards the aligned point cloud models are converted into a mesh for further processing.

Positives:

~high resolution scans of full figures

~textures which semi match the figures

Negatives:

~tedious alignment of scans

~bubbling of skin texture?

~immense time spent: scanning, aligning, and reworking smoothly