Hi Mark & any interested others,
We've been working on developing a cost effective and public proof
system for haptic (touch) display of museum objects for some time. (By
cost effective I mean affordable for an average museum) In order to feel
a virtual object, we first have to produce a 3D model so we have tested
3 different (relatively) cheap scanning systems, 3DSOM, which others
have already mentioned, NextEngine which is a desktop hardware (laser)
and software system and a slightly more expensive laser scanning
hardware and software system called E-Scan which seems to be the best
from our testing and can produce excellent results.
However, producing a good 3d model seems to always require a
considerable amount of post-production work which is somewhat
specialised. Baskets might also prove problematic but an interesting
challenge! Our haptic display systems use 3D models in x3D file format
which is very compact and retains detail and was originally developed
for embedding 3D rotational objects on websites. Free viewers for this
format are easily found by googling x3D. Models can also be used in pdf
documents where they can be viewed and rotated also, though more
standard CAD file formats such as stl, 3ds are used for this.
I'm giving a presentation at UCL on March 30th as part of an AHRC
Research Network workshop on conservation, digital strategies, object
handling etc. I'm not sure who can attend this but if anyone is
interested in attending, contact me offline and I'll find out.
Regards, David
David Prytherch PhD. FGE.
Senior Research Fellow in Haptics and Computer Interfaces
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