Whenever we need information from a book that we do not own and cannot find on the market anymore, we usually go for a long, boring, nerve-breaking scanning session at the local copy shop or wherever we can scan a large number of pages. Of course, you have to plan ahead for this process, because depending on the number of pages the respective book has, it might take all day. This is why I prefer copy shops. You leave it there and they call you when it is ready. No need for me to do the whole work.

But we live in the era of advanced technology, or at least the Japanese do and as usual, technology doesn't let us down. At the University of Tokyo, professor Masatoshi Ishikawa has developed a machine that uses a high speed camera and some special sensors, capable of scanning 200 pages in one minute.

The camera has the ability to operate at 500 fps and the sensors I was talking about are similar to those seen on Microsoft's Project Natal. The whole apparatus needs the sensors so that it can detect the page flips, just like motion detecting on gaming consoles. The chip doing all the work has been called Super Vision Chip by the professor and it stands at the base of this invention.

Though, for now, you have to manually flip all the pages of a book under the camera, there is still room for improvement. The inventor says that it can be made to scan even faster. The way the scanning process ends now is with the digital enhancing of the images on a computer. There is a special software, which 3D models the pages from the curved shape they are being scanned in, to the flat format.

I think that the addition of a mechanical “flipper” is a must, just so you make sure you don't skip pages while flipping them and so that your fingers don't appear in every scan. The movie from IEEESpectrum is worth seeing.




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