Microsoft Researchers Create Skynet UI: Turns Smartphones into 3D Scanners

Formnext

Share this Article

With 3d printers creeping their ways into thousands of new homes every month, such technology is bringing forth a variety of possible new applications for all sorts of technology. In order to take advantage of this trend ms-featwithin the 3D printing market, researchers at Microsoft are looking into making their Windows smartphones capable of becoming 3D face scanners.  They are doing this by using only the camera that comes with a typical phone as the data collection device.

The research Microsoft has been doing seems to differ from the technology used in most 3D scanners on the market today. Instead of relying on multiple sensors to calculate distance for accurate 3D models, Microsoft uses a plain old smartphone camera and some pretty sophisticated software algorithms. The tricky part for researchers was trying to make a user interface which was intuitive, as well as simple for anyone to use. If this 3D Reconstruction technology didn’t seem advanced enough already, than maybe the name of the user interface, which was named after the self-aware artificial intelligence system in the Terminator movies, “Skynet,” will do the trick.

Skynet UI works by allowing users to act almost as if they are taking a panoramic photograph with their phone. Instead of using themselves as the rotational pivot point, like a user would do when taking a panoramic photo, they use another person’s face as that point. The software gives the person scanning, cues of when to move the camera around the scannee’s head. In the meantime it captures ms-1image data and reconstructs it into a 3D rendering. The video at the bottom of this page will show you just how intuitive it is.

Once a person’s face is scanned, a smartphone user can rotate the face on their phone in any direction. They can then send the file to a 3D printer and print out a 3D representation of that person.

This research comes on the heals of similar research on a project called “Tango” being done by Google.  Google seeks to make smartphones 3d image capturing devices for a user’s surrounding environment. Unlike Google’s Project Tango, which uses several new sensors, and can scan entire rooms, Skynet UI is currently created for facial scanning, and uses just a simple smartphone camera. It will be very interesting to see where Microsoft takes this technology, as currently there are not a tremendous amount of applications for its use. Like any new advanced technology which comes to market, interesting applications to take advantage of this technology will surely come about. Discuss Microsoft’s Skynet UI at 3dprintboard, and be sure to check out the video below.



Share this Article


Recent News

Carlsmed to Go Public in $101 Million Bid to Scale 3D Printed Spine Implants

Polymaker Continues Expansion into Professional Filaments with Release of Fiberon PA612-ESD



Categories

3D Design

3D Printed Art

3D Printed Food

3D Printed Guns


You May Also Like

Featured

Josh Makeshift and the New Gold Standard 3D Printing Content Creation

In the beginning, 2007 or so, 3D printing videos were almost wholly absent from the web. Then, here and there, makers started to upload pictures of their rickety RepRaps and...

Teen Developed Desktop 3D Printing Extruder

Inexpensive desktop 3D printing extrusion has always been an impactful potential ally to 3D Printing users. Filabot and 3Devo have been trying to make this a reality for years, with...

Polymaker Unveils HT-PLA & HT-PLA-GF Line of 3D Printing Filaments

Today, Polymaker has launched a new line of HT-PLA & HT-PLA-GF filaments. These enhanced PLA versions increase the glass transition temperature of PLA from a normal 60°C to above 130°C....

3D Printing News Briefs, May 17, 2025: Color-Changing Materials, Humanoid Robot, & More

We’re covering research innovations in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs! First, Penn Engineering developed 3D printed materials that change color under stress, and UC Berkeley researchers created an open source,...