Matter and Form's THREE Packs Its Own Computer for Simpler 3D Scanning — From a Coin to a Car
Company celebrates a year in business with a fully self-contained color 3D scanner, based on 13-megapixel Sony sensors.
Matter and Form is back on the crowdfunding circuit with a next-generation 3D scanner which, it claims, can offer "metrological accuracy" for anything from a coin to car in full color — and controlled from any modern web browser.
"Matter and Form THREE lets you scan an astonishing range of object sizes […] with metrology-level accuracy and resolution," Matter and Form's Trevor Townsend claims of his company's latest device. "THREE's unique ChromaSpec technology uses the full spectrum of visible light to perfectly capture geometry and any color."
Building on what the company has learned since it first launched a 3D scanner a decade ago, THREE is a stereo camera which uses 13-megapixel Sony sensors with a DLP structured-light projector to scan objects of almost any size — from leaves and coins that will easily fit on the bundled turntable to vehicles that definitely won't. In addition to capturing depth data, it's also designed to capture color information to create a fully-colored model.
Somewhat unusually, it's also effectively a computer in itself. The THREE is driven by an internal and unnamed single-board computer featuring a quad-core 64-bit processor running at 1.5GHz with an integrated graphics processor (GPU) and 4GB of RAM. The idea: a 3D scanner which can be controlled entirely in-browser, with no need to install any software on your desktop or laptop.
"THREE is the world's first 3D scanner with fully onboard software that runs in any modern web browser and on any operating system. Use THREE with ANY device that supports Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge web browsers," Townsend says. "THREE does NOT need an internet connection and THREE is NOT a cloud service. THREE runs its own web server and Wi-Fi hotspot, and stores your scan projects internally. THREE is accurate like the best of the best metrology scanners, but easy enough that a middle school student can get up and running in a few minutes."
That internal computer isn't just used to run the scanning software, though: Matter and Form claims a full application programming interface (API) and the ability to run custom code on-device — everything from custom 3D scanning algorithms to 2D and 3D computer vision programs. The company even boasts of the ability to integrate the device into Home Assistant, or use it as the vision system for a robot.
The THREE scanner is now funding on Kickstarter, priced at $1,650 for early-bird backers — representing a claimed 45 percent discount over the planned retail price. Hardware is expected to ship in January next year, the company has confirmed.
