An ultra-fast scanner is developed by Ishikawa Senoo Laboratory, The University of Tokyo, Japan. This scanner can digitize a complete book of 250 pages in a MINUTE. Yes! In a minute. Also, the results are of super quality and not a distorted one, since it scans at such a fast speed.

It might be pretty hard even to fully read a text of 250 words in a minute and this machine is scanning 250 pages a minute. Phewww….really a high speed book scanner.

The Ishikawa Senoo Laboratory has named this scanner as BFS-Auto and it achieves this feat by integrating following three techs:

1. High speed fully automated page flipping machine
2. High speed real time 3D recognition
3. Real time 3D restoration to flatten a document image

Just see this video to digest the fact that scanning at such high speed is possible.

Now let’s see how the three features combine to make this feat possible.

Fully automated high-speed page flipping machine flips the book at 250 pages/min. The primary focus point is to design a mechanism so that no obstruction is caused to the scanner and at the same time full speed is maintained. The machinery developed can flip and scan the book at over 250 pages/min without modifying the book by cutting. Therefore, it can finish scanning a book within a minute with almost 250 pages.

Real-time 3D recognition is highly accurate and fast at the same time. The system continuously monitors the 3D deformation of each flipped page at a whopping speed of 500 times per second, and captures the best moment for book image digitization at the highest quality. This is possible using the newly constructed original algorithm in real-time. As of now, the high-definition camera captures the document both at high-speed and high-definition all at once. After the recognition, the definition performance is increased to 400 pixels per inch. This technology works in constant tandem with the high speed flipping machine that enables high-speed and high-definition digitization without missing a single page.

Added to this high speed flipping machine and high definition real time 3D recognition, is high speed Real-time 3D restoration. This Real-time 3D restoration is used to flatten or straighten the scanned document image. Watch the complete video to see how it works. This system has a technology built in to restore a captured image which might get distorted because of page curling to a flat original document image by using the captured image and the obtained 3D deformation. This system’s latest improvement to processing speed has allowed real-time restoration for capturing and scanning books.

Digitization will become super-duper fast once this technology is available for commercial use in general. Considering this speed, a library with 100,000 can be scanned in a matter of 70 days. That’s mind blowing.

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