As we walk through our daily lives, we use visual cues to navigate and understand the world around us. We observe the size and shape of objects and rooms, and we learn their position and layout almost effortlessly over time. This awareness of space and motion is fundamental to the way we interact with our environment and each other. We are physical beings that live in a 3D world. Yet, our mobile devices assume that physical world ends at the boundaries of the screen.

The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.

The Google team has been working with universities, research labs, and industrial partners spanning nine countries around the world to build on the last decade of research in robotics and computer vision, concentrating that technology into a unique mobile device. They are putting early prototypes into the hands of developers that can imagine the possibilities and help bring those ideas into reality.

3D motion and depth sensing

Project Tango devices contain customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment. These sensors allow the device to make over a quarter million 3D measurements every second, updating its position and orientation in real-time, combining that data into a single 3D model of the space around you.

They run Android and include development APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to standard Android applications written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine. These early prototypes, algorithms, and APIs are still in active development. So, these experimental devices are intended only for the adventurous and are not a final shipping product.

What could we do with it?

You could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping. What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building? You could also search for a product and see where the exact shelf is located in a super-store.

Google is already working with LG to put the technology in a consumer device sometime later this year, and taking it out of Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP). It’s Google’s way of saying that it’s serious about Tango, and that it’s one step closer to being in your next phone or tablet.

Source: Www.google.com

The project is two-pronged. First, Spark will exist as a platform that users can build upon and use to render 3D prints. Based on this platform, Autodesk will produce a simple stereolithographic printer for an estimated $5,000. The plans will be available to anyone who wants to build the unit themselves.

According to a blog post on the site:

Spark is an open 3D printing platform that will make it easier for hardware manufacturers, software developers, materials scientists, product designers, and more to participate in and benefit from this technology. Spark connects digital information to 3D printers in a new and streamlined way, making it easier to visualize prints and optimize them without trial and error, while also broadening the range of materials that can be used for printing. And because the Spark platform is open, everyone can use its building blocks to further push the limits of 3D printing and drive fresh innovation.

Autodesk needs to enter the desktop printer space. Stratasys announced solid revenue thanks to their acquisition of MakerBot and 3D Systems, another industrial maker, is busy trying to grab the home user. Why? Because industrial printers are prohibitively costly and are sold with a lot of overhead. Home 3D printers are basically commodity devices, like any HP inkjet.

Here’s hoping that the Spark will help grow the stereolithography market considerably and that it becomes the Android of 3D printing. Printers need standards and given the massive changes going on in the community, a bit of stability will be quite welcome.

Source: Techcrunch.com

These patents cover some of the most basic aspects of 3D printing, from the process of creating “infill,” the cross-hatched pattern that printers use to support the inside, to the heated plate that keeps objects stuck during printing. MakerBot, in fact, has long infringed on these very same patents and, for most of its existence, has skirted lawsuits, albeit with positive results. Many smaller manufactures haven’t been so lucky.

Even Formlabs, makers of the Form One stereolithographic machine, weren’t immune. They went to market last December while facing down 3D Systems lawyers for daring to use a similar printing technique.

Why is Big 3D finally paying attention to little guys like Formlabs and Afinia aka Microboards Technology, LLC? It’s because they’re finally getting traction in the home market. While it’s usually fine for B2B companies to snipe each other – nobody cares when big CRM smashes some puny competitor – this sniping is actually hurting the industry. By slowing down the adopting of home 3D printing, Stratasys and 3D Systems are cutting into their own bottom line. IBM, in the 1980s, never actively attacked the “clones” that sprung up on the market and we now have a variegated ecosystem of hardware that ranges from mobile devices to mainframes. No one stopped Linux from copying techniques and tricks used by Unix and, eventually, Windows, and the result is a deep and rich vein of open source computing prowess.

Patents served Stratasys and 3D Systems well when 3D printing was hard. To compete with them, competitors had to have deep pockets and be ready to pay licensing fees. Now that literally anyone can build an MakerBot-like FDM machine out of a few simple parts – this guy made one for $100 – the impetus for protection is far more mercenary. They are, in short, threatened.

The EFF has been trying to swat down fake patents, for better or worse, but the problem will continue to plague small makers until the patents expire. It does not benefit Stratasys to troll the small guy (unless it’s to protect its MakerBot investment, which would be a delightful bit of irony) and, in the end, it hurts the industry as a whole. The more people who know how to do home 3D printing, the more people who will be interested in professional products. That said, perhaps Stratasys is concerned that the home 3D printers will supplant its professional business. If this is the case, it’s a baseless fear akin to Ford being afraid of go-kart hobbyists.

Patents are fine when they truly protect the filers from predators. When the filers themselves, become the predators, however, the issue clouds the market, destroys innovation, and makes the big guys look mean. That’s not good for anyone.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The Structure isn’t just any 3D sensor though. It’s an incredibly small one – so small, in fact, that it can onto the back of your iPad (note: it’s compatible with any iOS device with a Lightning port) and connect without completely killing your battery life. While run-of-the-mill users can use the Structure and its early batch of companion apps to scan objects for printing at Shapeways or to fling balls for virtual kittens to chase around the 3D representation of a room, Occipital was really gunning to pick up developer support this time.

It’s certainly a nice little show of financial validation for the team, especially considering this is their first big foray into consumer-facing hardware and the fact that they didn’t exactly need the cash in the first place. At the time, CEO Jeff Powers remarked to me that since the company still had money left over from its previous funding round, the Kickstarter was meant in large part to be a marketing tool that would help gauge the demand for its curious gadget. The team originally set out to raise $100,000 when the campaign officially kicked off in mid-September, and early momentum put the project over the top in just three hours.

But could the project’s popularity ultimately prove to be detrimental? After all, I can think of a few projects that ultimately took flak because overwhelming demand outweighed the producers’ ability to deliver on what they promised. For now though, the team remains positive about its chances at delivering the Structure to 3D-hungry developers and tinkerers – to hear Occipital marketing director Adam Rodnitsky tell it, this current level of demand won’t affect shipping schedules “at all”.

“We put a lot of effort into setting up our supply chain well in advance to make sure we could deliver on what we promised to backers,” he said in an email. “We’re ready to meet this demand… and hopefully much more.”

In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the Structure’s voyage from curious concept to crowdfunding darling, you can check out our interview with CEO Powers and demo of the Structure in action below.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Their roots may be in software, but now the team is trying something very, very new. Occipital just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its very first hardware project: the Structure, a portable 3D sensor that straps to the back of your iPad that should ship by next February.

Update: Wow, the Occipital team has blown past its $100K funding goal in just over three hours.

“It took us out of our comfort zone,” CEO Jeff Powers admitted. “We went from a team of basically three to about 13, which is still ridiculously tiny, and no one sleeps anymore.”

Those sleepless nights seem to have paid off. The Structure itself is an awfully handsome piece of kit. Small and clad in colored anodized aluminum, it doesn’t look anything like the clunky 3D sensors you may have already been exposed to. That’s a testament to the sort of fastidious tweaking that went into making the Structure what it is – there’s a full-sized PrimeSense Carmine sensor in there, but it was up to Occipital to cut out the physical cruft so the Structure could fit in a pocket. Power consumption also had to be cut dramatically since it runs off the iPad 4′s battery (though it’ll technically connect to any iDevice in your arsenal that has a Lightning dock connector).

The really astonishing bit is how quickly the Structure works in capturing all of this data. Powers took the Structure and a few of the bundled demo apps for a brief spin in our New York office, and in a matter of mere moment he was able to capture a virtual bust of his ever-present marketing director and firing it off to Shapeways for printing. Scanning the topology of a side room was similarly quick, as was the process of throwing a virtual cat into the mix that would chase after balls that bounced off of 3D interpretations of couches and under coffee tables.

That breadth of those demo apps speaks to the sort of ecosystem that Powers hopes will rise up around the Structure in the weeks and months to come. After all, as neat as it is, the market for a gadget that lets its users capture and export 3D models for printing is still pretty limited. Powers’ vision is much more expansive: the SDK that’s being released alongside the Structure sensor will allow developers to build consumer-facing apps that take advantage of all that 3D data.

“We’re not really just building a device, we’re building a platform,” Powers said. As far as he sees it, Occipital can’t possibly build every possible augmented reality game or measuring app on its own. Instead, the team is going to make the low level data accessible to developers, and make high level APIs available to developers who know nothing about computer vision in a bid to make the Structure as accessible as possible.

It’s not hard to imagine the sorts of applications that could come along with adoption of the Structure. Looking to buy a new couch? Scan your living room and see if that sucker fits next to your bookshelf. Real estate agents could benefit from easy-to-capture, manipulable models of office spaces and homes (though some startups already have a head start on that front). Thankfully, while the Structure is designed to fit on the back of your iPad, ambitious devs can use connect to PCs, Macs, and Android devices thanks to a so-called hacker cable that allows for a standard connection over USB.

At first glance, this whole thing seems like a drastic shift for a company that has only ever focused on crafting software, to say nothing of on the production perils and pitfalls that come with building hardware at scale. That’s not to say that Occipital’s 3D ambitions have come completely out of the blue though. Earlier this year the company closed its acquisition of French startup ManCTL, which was best known for a 3D scanning desktop app called Skanect that let users fire up cheapo 3D sensors like the Kinect or the Asus Xtion to capture 3D data and convert them into full-color models in a matter of minutes.

Structure, then, seems like the next logical step. It’s a convergence of two seemingly divergent realms of expertise, and it’s arguably happening at just the right time. Smartphones and tablets are growing more capable by the day, which leads people to expect more from their daily companions. And with 3D printers moving into the mainstream, there’s a growing sense of awareness around the value of converting objects and environments into 3D representations.

Even the Kickstarter campaign is a sign of the times. Powers concedes that Occipital doesn’t actually need to go the crowdfunded route – he says they’ve got enough left over from its previous funding round to cover these very early production runs – but it couldn’t hurt to help build buzz among developers and gauge demand for a pricey tablet add-on. If you’re interested in throwing your hat in the ring you can lay claim to an early adopter package for $329, but the package will cost you $349 if you wait too long.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Created by Professor Hiroshi Ishii and his students at the MIT Media Lab, this tangible interface starts with cameras that capture objects in three dimensions. The 3D information is processed by a computer, which then moves the solid rods that form the center of the table. The result is a 3D replica of your hands.

The system would allow people to reproduce objects remotely and, of course, you can feed it any 3D data, including city maps.

Source: Sploid.gizmodo.com