

Superfast scanner digitizes books by rapidly flipping pages - sandGorgon
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/book-flipping-scanning

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ig1
There's no real use-case here. There are basically two types of books you can
scan, rare books and non-rare books.

For non-rare books you typically just cut the binding off and feed the book
through a scanner that has a page feeder.

For rare books you typically turn the pages by hand, but the reason you do it
slowly isn't because you're human, but rather to avoid damaging the book. Any
kind of rapid jerking movement to turn the pages isn't a viable solution

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ugh
Cheap, fast home book scanning. You don’t want to destroy your own books, yet
being able to scan them quickly would be pretty sweet.

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reitzensteinm
Well, I think a crazy robotic solution throws cheap out of the window. Could
this ever get mass market enough to bring the costs down?

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billswift
I didn't watch the video, did you read the article? From the article it's not
really a robot so much as a high-speed camera that manages to photograph the
pages as a person flips through a book. With software to correct for the fact
that many pages are curved. It also mentioned that some pages will be missed,
so you would probably have to go back and re-scan several pages from each
book. In fact, they even mentioned eventually getting a low-resolution version
you could use with a cell phone camera.

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WA
Two problems: 1\. Whenever I rapidly flip pages in a book, I do miss quite a
few. 2\. You have to open the book quite far, otherwise the text close to the
binding won't be visible. Thus, some book-formats simply can't be scanned
rapidly (think of hardcover-books).

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ent
Page numbers can come handy for problem 1. Make the program recognize page
numbers and it can tell you which ones are missing and you can just re-scan
them.

It's true that you have to open the book quite far, it might be a problem for
some books with very small inner margins but hard cover-books are no problem,
just open the covers and flip through the pages inside.

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stcredzero
This video inspires a thought. I wonder if there will be successful
applications of AI and domestic robots which are super graceful, super-fast
half-wits? On the face of it, this doesn't sound half bad. Give robots the
ability to rapidly model kinematics and program the AI to prevent things from
breaking. An AI that seeks to prevent damage but which otherwise has no
volition of its own seems safe. The situations where it wouldn't be safe would
make interesting SciFi. (A minimalist Asimov short story, but with only one
law, not three.)

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yread
Have you noticed that the book he made himself for testing only has 3 or 4
different pages?

