Comment by I.S. on November 1, 2011 at 2:58pm

Interesting but just a note: weight is 5Kg

Comment by Stephen Dwyer on November 1, 2011 at 5:37pm

The amount of data that laser scanners put out is fairly large. I have used a Faro Arm with a 2d laser scan head, and the quantity of data slows down the computer pretty fast (not the greatest laptop though, couple years old). I can only imagine how much data a 3d scanner puts out. I don't know how they post process the data, but using the 2d scanner with Geomagic (one program in the list on the spec sheet) is not particularly easy when looking to get accurate, clean results (I use it in an inspection/reverse engineering capacity, most recently to create a model of a DSLR for designing a gimbal). The data processing time is unfortunately rather extensive. In a mapping/avoidance application, this may be less problematic.

Comment by Scott Plunkett on November 2, 2011 at 8:38am

Yep - it is still heavy, but compared to the one Google used in their car, this thing is tiny, and collects equivalent data.  I suspect it will take some pretty serious processing horsepower as well, but just thought it was really interesting conceptually.

Comment by I.S. on November 2, 2011 at 1:32pm

Yep, these things are shrinking and what is processing challenging today will be no more sooner than later (I've just seen Beagleboard running OpenCV, quite impressive)

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