The end-user panel on the closing day of SPAR International 2013 sparked debate on a number of key topics, ranging from new hardware developments to the need for more “intelligent” and accessible 3D data.

Led by moderator Marius Blom Managing Director, Apply Capnor, the panel included Wayne Rodieck, Manager, Corporate Spatial Data for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Joseph Chumbley of Lockheed-Martin Space Systems, Curtis Clabaugh, State Photogrammetry & Surveys Engineer with Wyoming Depart of Transportation, Dennis Rodriguez, Project Manager at Denver International Airport and Albuquerque Police Department detective, Juliana Serna.

Joseph Chumbley of Lockheed-Martin pointed to the 'wow factor' of "some of the mobile devices" on show at SPAR International: "The proliferation of Kinect-style collection devices." He believes that democratising access to scanning technology will ultimately lead to better data: "The more information that we can gather and throw into our simulations, the better results we're getting to see out of this."

Wayne Rodieck was another who expressed hope in the potential usefulness of new, portable scanning devices, whilst sounding a warning about methods of visualisation in common use in the industry: "We were particularly interested in the lower-scale, lower cost hardware. We're looking for something that's easily deployable in a high number in a high activity area, so it has to be something that's fairly lightweight, requires very little human interaction and just works. For us, it's all about making the data useful and accessible to our wider audience. Every presentation that I've seen so far from our service providers, they always start off with a point cloud. And that immediately turns off almost everyone that's sitting in that boardroom watching this presentation, because they see it as something that's not meaningful to them. So I implore the people that are in the industry, at least when you are dealing with us, please do not come and show us a point cloud - it's meaningless to us - show us that pretty picture - that means something to me."

Dennis Rodriguez, on the other hand, warned against 'cool' visualisations that fail to communicate usable information: "Sure, show the pretty pictures because it makes executives happy, but focus on the data and the communication of that data.”

For Curtis Claybaugh, visualisations should be truly three-dimensional, rather than the "Two-and-a-half D" that 'so-called 3D' often is in practice: "Why not take the next step and go to 3D - it's not that hard to put on the glasses and view it."

Juliana Serna pointed to the need for easy-to-use hardware and software: "Unless there's a program that's easy, it's hard to teach and it's hard to learn because there's so many other things that I have to do besides scanning and getting this data."

She believes it would benefit the manufacturers and processing software suppliers to spend time in the field observing how police forensics teams use scanners and software to build a criminal case: "Why aren't these companies coming out to our crime scenes and hanging out with us for a day to see how they could better help us on our end of the industry?" she asked.

Is cost a driver?

The cost of post-processing scan data and of software licenses were both issues of concern for several of the panellists.

"Most people in these [sales] conversations, and it includes my industry as well, never tell you the cost of post-processing - that is THE expense," noted Dennis Rodriguez.

For the client, however, this may not be such an issue, as Curtis Clabaugh explained: "This is going to come as a shock to some people, but I don't worry about what it costs, and I do that every day and I work in the transportation world - and here's the reason why: the cost to do good mapping, high end intelligent engineering mapping is about 7% of the design cost. The design cost is about 10% of construction, so why are you worried about the money? Inflation rums 6-10% yearly. Nobody starts without a map, without the imagery, without the data. So why should I worry about the cost when it's a small, small component of the process, yet critical. I very seldom get asked how much does it cost, what I do get asked every day is 'how soon can I get it?' That's the key: deliver it fast, deliver it right."

As an asset owner, cost isn't a driver for us, the driver is the intelligence and usability of the data," confirmed Joseph Chumbley. "If [3D] doesn't have intelligence or a receptacle for intelligence in it, it's worthless. 3D to me is model-based or platform-based engineering where it has some relational knowledge to how it interacts in the environment it's in, and that's the driver for me and my industry."

That's all well and good, but even if scanning is a relatively low cost aspect in the overall picture, the problem for service providers is that, as Dennis Rodriguez observed, "you can't write a relative cost contract.”

What's next?

"I think we are in that window of time where digitising existing stuff that isn't already digital is going to shrink," said Dennis Rodriguez. "I may be talking 10 to 20 years, but over time more and more information is going to be coming to you digitally anyway, whether it's a CAD file or whatever." What this means, he believes, is that the market for capturing stuff "after the fact" will shrink, reducing per use costs. "The broad breadth is not going to be as it is now: it's going to get tighter in certain areas and go away in other areas."

Service providers could benefit from this, suggested Marius Blom: "Suddenly the data they collected once becomes more valuable, and you get a whole new range of users, using it."

Asset owners could also reduce lifecycle costs, as they would be able to build up a full 3D data set over time, as Joseph Chumbley highlighted: "Today I can use my point cloud and it's very efficient for us, because I can push off that cost of developing the model and do it in a more efficient and timely fashion and over a longer period of time, instead of easting the full cost of it now - drop it over a 5 or 10 year period and be able to develop it in a much more intelligent and accurate fashion than just coming in and saying I want a full model of everything right now.”

Chumbley pointed out that Lockheed-Martin spends "about 25% of [its] product development time in a 3D world at this point. And we have recently implemented a corporate drive that in the next two years 100% of our data will be developed inside a 3D environment. It allows us greater risk mitigation, greater control over schedule and cost, much greater drivers on efficiency from a human perspective."

A final, and potentially 'game-changing' topic raised by the panel was the impact of the coming of age of a user base that has grown up surrounded by computer technology: "There's a new generation coming to the ballgame," stated Marius Blom.

"Everything that we know today is going to change as soon as your kids are doing 3D scanning, whether it's a laser scanner or photography or however they are capturing 3D," forecasts Joseph Chumbley. "I can guarantee you that the software that comes out then is going to change everything that we are doing now. Getting [software] standards and other things in place to help influence that direction is critical," he concluded.
 

My first full day of my first SPAR International Conference on end-to-end 3D and two things that stood out were the potential for crowdsourcing of data and delivering it anytime, anyplace using cloud storage and mobile devices. 

In his fascinating keynote, Michael Jones of Google highlighted some exciting ways in which data is being measured and sourced through collective approaches.

Some of these include Google Map Maker or Field Data, using Android devices to calculate real-time road speeds in Los Angeles, and leveraging a games-playing community to mapping the location of statues, as the Niantic Project is seeking to do. 

Crowds are also a source of new funding. Chris Slaughter CEO and founder of Texas-based Lynx Labs, speaking in the New Technologies session on Compact, Affordable 3D Capture Options revealed how his company used Kickstarter to secure the first orders for its portable 3D scanner, based on Leap Motion technology.

He also pointed out the wide range of uses to which the first customers will be putting the device - from 3D printing (about half the customers) to imaging for plastic surgery, targeted radiotherapy, music videos, historical preservation and even fighting childhood obesity. The lesson there seems to be, put scanning technology in more hands and people will use their own know-how and natural ingenuity to create new and exciting end-use markets.

Some of the other novel uses for scanning I have heard about at the show so far include counting trees on orange groves (Carnegie Mellon NERC) - very important for yield management if you are making orange juice - inspecting the inside of a boiler at a power plant using a micro unmanned aerial vehicle (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and robotic retrieval and inspection of martian rock samples (Chiaro Technologies). 

Another example of the usefulness of crowds (and it’s great to see so many people here in Colorado Springs, even if it’s now more snowshoes than shorts and swimsuits weather) - an event like SPAR International, with its multiple tracks, allows you to make new connections and think outside the box.

Until yesterday, I had never considered scanning of cultural monuments and crime scenes to have much in common, but after seeing Professor Heinz Rüther’s keynote about the Zamani Project’s work at Petra in Jordan and then catching some of the Forensics and Security session on the admissibility of 3D data in court, I realised that professionals in both fields have to consider very carefully how they present their data.

In the case of a crime reconstruction, that means thinking about things like how a judge, lawyer or jury’s interpretation of the evidence might change if you present a car as being coloured red, rather than another shade, for instance.

In Professor Rüther’s case, that means providing two 3D models - one for professional conservators to use, in black-and-white and with gaps where there are gaps in the scan data; the other, in colour with gaps filled in, for presentation to a lay audience). 

Another hot topic has been the increasing value of cloud computing. Greg Bentley of Bentley Systems highlighted the possibilities of real-time cloud-based streaming of point clouds in his keynote.

Drilling down to the session tracks, I’ve heard great presentations from the likes of Marius Blom (Apply Capnor), Aaron Blaisdell (PACE Engineers) and Erin Rae Hoffer (Autodesk) that have shown how cloud computing can be utilised in specific real-world scanning scenarios. 

justin@justintoland.com 

You know 3D laser scanning is going places when both U.S. border officials AND taxi drivers want to engage you in conversation about the sector. For the record, my 'friend' from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a photography buff, doesn't think laser scanning will get cheap enough to go mainstream.

Maybe some of you here at the  SPAR International Conference on End-to-End 3D, taking place this week in Colorado Springs, would care to disagree.

Coming over the pond as a two-time veteran of  SPAR Europe, I am excited to see the latest innovations coming out of the United States.

The SPAR conference got into full swing until Tuesday, but I got a good flavour what's cooking in the R&D departments of several universities working on 3D capture, process and deliver late Monday afternoon during the well-attended Lightning Round, presented by SPAR Point Group advisory members Jody Lounsbury and Chris Zmijewski.

Among the exciting developments is Czech Technical University in Prague's work in such areas as dynamic deformation measurements, pin-hole lens photogrammetry and a novel vehicle for airborne lidar - airships.

From South Korea, the SCSI Lab at Yonsei University is working on ways of speeding up the process of querying structures from point clouds and enabling digital terrain models to be created more rapidly.

Also in the Land of the Morning Calm, Professor Sung Joon Ahn and his colleagues at Sungkyunkwan University have developed a system for automatic feature extraction from point clouds. He invites anyone wanting to try it out to 'bring your own point cloud' to the University Pavilion!

Representing U.S. academia, Lori Collins and her team at the University of South Florida are helping to change the way we teach, learn and discover about natural and cultural heritage.

They're using the immersive potential of scanning technology, augmented reality and 3D printing to improve students' scores, on the one hand, and creating new ways of preserving the past. For instance, through digital sculptural databases and partnerships with conservators in Mexico.

I'm really looking forward to Tuesday morning's keynotes, and especially interested to learn what insights  Michael Jones, chief technology advocate for Google Ventures, will apply to the 3D end-to-end world.

The live demonstrations on Tuesday and Wednesday will be another highlight - from measuring progress on a job site to indoor mobile mapping demos. I am going to be paying particularly close attention to the crime scene scans this time round.

New SPAR Editor, Dan McGovern, had his own 'live demo' this morning - an up-close and personal view of photogrammetry, taking a helicopter ride over  The Broadmoor resort. It certainly looked cool from ground level.  Check out my video here ... and enjoy the show!

A new study is using portable 3D laser scanning to evaluate the size of offshore workers and their space requirements, providing the industry crucial information for health, safety and design decisions for decades to come. 

Arthur Stewart, deputy director of Robert Gordon University’s Centre for Obesity Research and Epidemiology (CORE) in Aberdeen, Scotland, is carrying out the study by scanning some 600 North Sea offshore oilmen to determine how the body shape and size of today's worker impacts a range of issues. 

Today's average offshore worker is 0.8 inches taller and 20 percent heavier than in 1985, when the last workforce survey was conducted using calipers and tape measures. 

The new 3D survey will potentially lead to changes in the design of such things as bunk-beds, survival suits, lifeboats, helicopters and muster stations. Stewart received over $200,000 (£137,831) from Oil and Gas UK, the country's offshore oil industry association, to conduct the survey. 

"What we can't expect the industry to do is to suddenly redesign all the offshore installations," Stewart said in an interview with local broadcaster STV. 

This work undoubtedly has interesting implications for ergonomics in all workplaces. However, the cost of carrying out the survey, part of which which will be done in-situ using a portable hand-held scanner, suggests, for the time being, it will only be used in industries and situations where such information is so crucial - submarines, mines and other confined spaces, spring to mind - that workers will be regularly and routinely scanned to ensure the best possible fit between body shape and working environment. 

As the cost of scanning falls, many people could find that the first day in a new job includes a body scan to ensure their desk and chair are ergonomically matched to their needs. The benefit in terms of increased productivity from less absence caused by back pain would certainly make it a cost worth paying for many employers. 

Stewart's background is in sports science, and his other 3D laser scanning and digital anthropometry research interests include investigating the use of lidar body scanning in the treatment of eating disorders. 

A new exhibition in Liverpool, England highlights the increasing cultural importance of LIDAR and the possibilities of personalizing content. 

The "Art of Pop Video" exhibition, running at the city's Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) until May 26, showcases some of the most creative music promos ever made. 

Notably, in a preview article in the Financial Times last weekend, the show's curators, Michael Aust and Daniel Kothenschulte, list the James Frost-directed video for Radiohead's "House of Cards" as one of the top 10 most influential music videos. There's a neat link with the 3D printing ecosystem, which is increasingly about the bespoke and the personalized.

The importance of that is shown in another recent 'best of' list: The Design Museum in London's Designs of the Year 2013. 

One of the finalists (the winner is announced April 17) is Free Art and Technology Lab's Free Universal Construction Kit - "an online set of 80 bricks and components that can be 3D-printed and fixed to existing construction toys – from Lego to K’Nex – to form previously impossible hybrid designs," as Oliver Wainwright writes for the UK's Guardian newspaper. 

Or, as the creators of the kit put it, "Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can [with]….a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys." 

Linking scanning, printing and a public space, the Japanese "creative lab" PARTY recently opened Omote 3D Shashin Kan, a concept pop-up store in Tokyo, that the organizers described as "the world's first attempt to capture you and your family's portraits in 3D, using 3D scanners and a 3D printer." 

As PARTY's Masashi Kawamura explained to Wallpaper magazine: "In Japan the Shichi-Go-San festival celebrates the healthy growth of children at three, five and seven years old. Children dress up in kimonos and families take commemorative pictures. We thought that by using modern-day technology we could literary add a new dimension by creating a new form of memorabilia." 

The scanning was done with an Artec MHT 3D scanner, with the resulting 3D printed figurines costing from 21,000 to 42,000 yen ($220 to $440, depending on size). The initial exhibition (from last November until January) proved so successful that a second Omote 3D Shashin Kan last week popped up at the Tokyo department store, Isetan Shinjuku. A perfect example of the rapid mainstreaming of 3D scan-to-print culture. 

The days when South by Southwest was an event purely for music heads to discover the next big thing are long gone. Today SXSW is a global launch pad for all manner of cool stuff—from movies to comedy to, well, 3D scanners. Indeed, it was very telling that one of the hottest pieces of news to emerge from the Interactive Sessions in Austin, TX was MakerBot's announcement of its Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner.

The prototype of the new device that CEO Bre Pettis demonstrated to the excited legions of tech geeks in his SXSW keynote has already generated a ton of interest. The goal of the Digitizer, which has been compared to "a Xerox machine for real-world objects" is to take the need for expertise in 3D modeling out of the scan-to-print workflow. Users will be able to get laser scans "in as little as three minutes" promises MakerBot, adding that the device, which will work under artificial light indoors, "is optimized for 3D printing." Pettis indicated that the new product will be ideal for scanning cylinder-shaped objects between 2 and 8 inches high. In other words, exactly the kind of stuff the Thingiverse community is interested in creating. "The models you'll get are watertight and ready for making," promises MakerBot.

With an expected shipping date of fall 2013, the Digitizer is likely to bring the long-anticipated mainstreaming of scanning technology one step closer. Of course, MakerBot are by no means the only people working on mass market scanning and modeling breakthroughs, as highlighted both by last week's in-depth interview with Artec Group's head of business development, Anna Zevelyov, and by the news that the Leap Motion Controller will ship with access to an online app store called Airspace that will include a plug-in for use with Autodesk 3D design tools. No doubt further announcements in this space will follow before the Digitizer hits the shelves. Either way, it looks like 2013 could be the first year that Santa's sack is full of scanners—now wouldn't that be something? 

For this week's Continental View, I caught up with Artec Group's Director of Business Development, Anna Zevelyov, who gave us some exclusive news about a forthcoming product launch and provided more insight into Artec's recently-announced collaboration with PrimeSense, the people behind the range camera technology in a Kinect. 

Introducing the Spider  

One of several exciting new developments at Artec is a new high-end handheld 3D scanner called the Spider, which is set to be unveiled at the Control show in Stuttgart in May (14-17). "This is going to be another breakthrough for us because right now the accuracy and resolution of our current high-end scanners are sometimes not enough for the really small details for rapid manufacturing," explains Zevelyov. The name Spider comes from the fact that the new device "has a lot of eyes, a lot of cameras," she says. And most significantly, "it will be under 20,000 euros, which is an unheard of price in this high-end market…" We are really going into manufacturing, high-end precision, but at a really low cost compared to what's out there." 

This price point and scanning accuracy in the '10s of microns' range mean that Artec believes the Spider can compete with devices from the likes of GOM, Breuckmann, FARO and Solutionix when the new product starts to ship in June. In addition to being lightweight and handheld, the new 3D scanner will have texture and markerless real-time scanning and fusing. "You'll be able to stop and start the scan without aligning the frames afterwards - it will be a huge breakthrough," says Zevelyov.  

The PrimeSense collaboration 

And, it seems, Artec and PrimeSense are so taken by the possibilities combining forces affords that further collaborations between are in the pipeline: "We're definitely working more with them very closely. We have some projects that I'm not at liberty to discuss yet," says Zevelyov. She believes that there is a "nice convergence" of interests in the fact that Artec is moving from high-end scanning towards the entry-level, while PrimeSense is seeking opportunities to move from the bottom end of the market towards the middle section. She also believes that PrimeSense's success in selling 20 million units should be more widely recognized within the scanning community.  

Going mass market 

If working with PrimeSense is a good way to increase the scanner market as a whole, the next step must surely be to incorporate 3D scanning technology into smart phones such as the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy. However, Zevelyov cautions that this is still some way off: "Every single manufacturer has been trying to integrate a 3D scanner into an iPhone. I don't know of anybody in our industry who hasn't tried or thought about it, but at this point we are still a little bit away from making it doable. The primary reason is the processing power of the device itself, and the second reason is the lighting. Improve the flash, graphics card and processing power and," she says, "you will see 3D scanners popping up in these mobile devices. But at this point, and for the next year at least, I don't think anyone will come out with anything useful."

The lack of mass market availability is also one of the reasons why 3D scanning is some way behind 3D printing on the hype curve, even if scan data is a crucial input for many of the 3D models now being made physical. However, the hype will come, believes Zevelyov: "Scanning is behind printing, but not too far and it will have its heyday pretty soon - we're talking about a year, maybe two years, where everyone will be talking about it as well."

Linking the blossoming 3D printing sector to 3D models is one of the goals of Viewshape, an online community launched by Artec in 2010 that allows registered users to upload their scans and view and download those of other users. "Initially when it all started three years ago, we just wanted to create a viewer for our models," recalls Zevelyov. "And then we took it a step further - let's create a mobile viewer for an iPhone. And then we took it another step further - let's have a way for people to share models, like Flickr for 3D - that's how we described it to each other." 

The next step is to try and monetize the project: "The idea is that we will give businesses, e-commerce, the ability to have 3D models on their website, and that would be a premium service that they would pay for." Realizing that few online stores would have the expertise to add full 3D functionality to their websites, Artec hopes to be able to step into the breach and provide the code "for a small monthly fee," says Zevelyov. In the interim the service remains free and Artec is encouraging people to sign up, share 3D models with friends and colleagues and also use it as a storage space. "With time it will be more and more acceptable to share models, to share work, to talk about problems and benefits and success stories. Right now it's not a huge community, but it will be. I'm 100% confident in that," believes Zevelyov. 

To reward existing users and encourage more people to post material on Viewshape, Artec is currently running a cash-prize competition with celebrity judges called Winter Fun: "We're really curious how people are using this bundle," says Zevelyov. "We want to see that it's useful, we want to see that people are excited about it."

Artec is also encouraging interaction of another kind - the firm has recently opened a space on University Avenue in Palo Alto, California that serves as part office/part retail showroom. Among the technology on display is Artec Welcome, a facial recognition software that, when it is fully developed, will allow the user to link a computer to a Kinect (or other PrimeSense device) and access it without needing to enter a password. Zevelyov has just moved to the US from Moscow to head up the new site and encourages anyone who's interested to come down and take a look at the future of 3D scanning: "We love visitors…we're big enthusiasts and start-up kind of folk."