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The best inventions are ones that eliminate repetition, this automatic book scanner does just that. Believe it or not it was constructed using LEGO.
” After the invention of hyperpaper, I began to scan my books. Soon I found out that what I expected was true — It was awesomely BOREING!
If this drudgery were to be automated!
Scanning a book involves picking up the book from the scanner carefully so that you won’t change the current pages, and turning pages precisely. These activities are as easy as breakfast for human beings. However, our sophisticated biomachienery owe a lot to the Evolution. Without its support, the activities are far too difficult for robots.
How it works
* The Glider is wound up, The Shuttle is at the right position.
* The Shuttle moves to the left.
* The Glider winds down until it touches the book.
* The Shuttles moves to the right. The Glider, touching the book, filps the page.
* The Glider winds up.
* The Balance is lift up. The computer detects the event and sends message to the scanner.
* The machiene pauses for 35 seconds, while the scannaer is working.
* The Balance lifts down.
* Repeat.”
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There exists a professional version of this device at http://kirtas-tech.com/
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Kirtas does not press the page on the glass. Therefore the kirtas technology is not sufficient for quality OCR. The japanese lego solution presses the book page onto glass. That is crucial.
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Yo, dude, please either start building and selling this design or teach me how to! This is awesome!!! Not that we want to make money, but that we want to help get knowledge out there. Granted, I wouldn’t want people to copy books out of copy right, (not that that system is fair, etc.) but just so that people can scan their own book collections and read them. And maybe share with people who have authenticated copies of books.
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I forgot to mention I wrote an automatic book reader, called CLEAR, at http://frdcsa.onshore.net/frdcsa/internal/clear/index.html. Sorry for polluting this site but I thought it was relevant.
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DUDE!!!!
I received that EXACT same scanner 2-4 F’n YEARS AGO w/ No POWER-SUPPLY!!
PLEASE tell me how the hell you are powering it (solder points to tap, etc..) ’cause I still have the damn thing, but out of all the bags of adaptors I’ve accumulated I haven’t found one that will work/fit & it appears you aren’t using it’s adaptor port, so……..
It’d be beyond fan-f*ckin’-tastic if you could provide a possible solution to this wee-lil’ dilemma I forgot about till’ just now!!!
Thanks mang_
-(V)@’|’|’-
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In a related effort, I built a book scanner with an inferior design (flips pages and uses a digital camera, but not 100% able to flip) using the Lego NXT block and Perl. http://frdcsa.onshore.net/frdcsa/internal/digilib/bookscanner.mov. Source available.
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Where is it possible to learn more about bookscanner.mov videoclip?
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There is a link in the article.
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As regards learning more about the bookscanner.mov, that scanner was destroyed during a psychosis soon after it was built, however, as of this month we are going to rebuild it. Contact me in person at adougher9 through yahoo with a subject FRDCSA to learn more.
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kirtas is primarily non-contact, and achieves flatness by not opening
the book fully and using “pushers” (air?) near the spine to flatten
pages. The Lego unit will have the usual curvature distortion
near the spine. treventus uses the book being more closed than
kirtas, probably uses vacuum, and likely touches the page; it
looks to have less mechanism for separating multiple stuck-
together pages.
Smashing against glass isn’t any good for achieving flatness
near where the pages connect to the spine.