Designers, architects, gadget lovers, gamers, real estate professionals, welcome to the future. The Structure Sensor, by Occipital, isn’t JUST a 3D object scanner. But if it was, wouldn’t you be thrilled? More than just a device, it is a hardware platform that gives developers the ability to easily create applications that take advantage of a 3D sensor on an iOS device for the first time ever. Architects and designers will be able to capture a measured model of interior spaces quickly that they can then use to visualize changes, understand material needs, capture measurements and share ideas with clients. With this device you’ll be able to capture every room in your house – including every measurement – in seconds. You’ll be able to visualize changes to your house to see if you like them before you make them. You’ll be able to capture and share where you live with people halfway around the world – or even save them to share with people in the future.
Anyone who pre-orders a Structure Sensor now will receive it with the first available app- for 3D object scanning- also created by Occipital. So, in the very short-term, this will be the first thing that people will be able to do with the Structure Sensor. The even better part is what else is coming, consider the possibilities… Interesting to note about Occipital’s Kickstarter campaign is that a very large majority of the 3500+ backers were developers, so we expect there to be lots of interesting apps coming in 2014 for this device/platform, including:
- 3D mapping of indoor spaces for instant measurements and virtual redecoration.
- Augmented reality (AR) games where virtual objects interact precisely with the geometry of the physical world, including occlusions.
- Body scanning for fitness tracking and virtual clothes fitting.
- Virtual reality games using 3D environments imported from the real world.
- And, finally, 3D object scanning for easy 3D content creation. With the Structure Sensor,3D scanning no longer requires a dedicated hardware device; rather, it’s simply an app that uses the Structure Sensor’s depth stream as its foundation
HOW IT WORKS: The Structure Sensor uses structured light to capture depth data. Structured light uses a laser projector to cast a precise pattern of thousands of invisible infrared dots onto objects and spaces. It then uses a frequency-matched infrared camera to record how the pattern changes, thereby understanding the geometry of those objects and spaces. As a result, the Structure Sensor can generate a VGA depth stream at 30 frames per second, with each pixel representing an exact distance to a real-world point.
DEMO APPS: The Structure Sensor will ship with demo apps so it can be used right out of the box. These demo apps include: Object Scanner for scanning objects in 3D to export to 3D printers and 3D modeling programs; Room Capture for capturing entire rooms as interactive 3D models; and Fetch, an augmented reality game that turns the real world into a game world.
Questions? Want to Preorder? Preorders will ship in June. For more information, visit Occipital on the Web at http://occipital.com and
It was only a matter of time… wow this is pretty cool. Next step would be if they make it accessible and able to work with Sketch-Up…
Yes, talk about a game changer for quite a few industries…
Hey Lisa, you can actually import models from that into Sketchup. I have one of those on order, and I’ve actually got a 3D systems scanner. I can import models directly into Sketchup. Very cool.
Eric, you are so hip with one already on order!
This is totally amazing! Sounds like a real game changer!
yes, Terri, I totally agree with you, it will be fun to see what the investor/developers come up with as well, the possibilities are endless~
how would you send a scan you took into google sketchup
It is actually a platform for developers to create apps/software from at this point. I am interested to see how that will work as well.