Have you ever wanted to take a 3D image of something with your phone? With the research project being done by Microsoft Research, you just might be able to. The project, called MobileFusion, allows mobile phone users to turn their phones into 3D scanners, without any sort of extra peripheral. The program can create a 3D mesh model with full color right in front of your eyes, and it’s fairly exciting to see that sort of power being drawn from the mobile phones that we carry around on a day-to-day basis:
Have you ever wanted to take a 3D image of something with your phone? With the research project being done by Microsoft Research, you just might be able to. The project, called MobileFusion, allows mobile phone users to turn their phones into 3D scanners, without any sort of extra peripheral. The prThis isn’t just a pretty image – the 3D images produced by mobile fusion can have real applications in the way of 3D printing and augmented reality games, along with anything else you might need to import a 3D image into. Even apart from practical uses for a 3D asset, people can “take a 3D scan of something they see on vacation, such as the Eiffel Tower, and immediately share it with friends or family,” and “take a 3D scan of something they wanted to sell online, such as a vase or a lamp.”
For those excited about the increasingly close frontier of augmented reality, the applications of an easily accessible 3D scanner like MobileFusions are exciting to say the least. From creating custom assets in games or doing 3D printing, getting this technology on any mobile phone is something that any technology lover can get behind. Unfortunately, MobileFusion isn’t available to the public just yet, nor are their firm plans in place to make it available in the near future. That being said, the developers do plan to bring it to us at some point. When they do decide to make the software available, they intend to make it compatible with all types of mobile devices.
