How Google's High Speed Book Scanner De-Warps Pages 209
Hugh Pickens writes "Patent 7,508,978, awarded to Google, shows how the company has already managed to scan more than 7 million books. Google's system uses two cameras and infrared light to automatically correct for the curvature of pages in a book. By constructing a 3D model of each page and then 'de-warping' it afterward, Google can present flat-looking pages online without having to slice books up or mash them onto a flatbed scanner. Stephen Shankland writes that the 'sophistication of the technology illustrates that would-be competitors who want to feature their own digitized libraries won't have a trivial time catching up to Google.' First, a book is placed on a flat surface, while above it, an infrared projector displays a special mazelike pattern onto the pages. Next, two infrared cameras photograph the infrared pattern from different perspectives. 'The images can be stereoscopically combined, using known stereoscopic techniques, to obtain a three-dimensional mapping of the pattern,' according to the patent. 'The pattern falls on the surface of (the) book, causing the three-dimensional mapping of the pattern to correspond to the three-dimensional surface of the page of the book.'"
Patent? Prior Art? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't this a Sci-Fi movie staple back in the 80s? They used it for body and object scanning, not books...but still.
Re:Playing Catch-up (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that all known? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe those books are less important to commit to a digital scan ;-)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Failing that there are alternative methods that might work as well.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, is it just me, but wouldn't it be easier to just cut the spine off the book instead of developing a whole new way of scanning it?
With 7 million books, the manpower and time saved for them to cut the spine off would be worth it.
Also, they can resell the books if needed or give them charity after they are done.
Kind of would be a waste of a paper to tear that many books apart.
Re:The New Bell Labs? (Score:1, Insightful)
Bell Labs did basic research that most of the time didn't have any current commercial applications and maybe never will.
Google's all have current commercial applications. I don't know of anything they do that is for pure research and to add to humanities knowledge.
Why is this a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why this is such a showstopper for other book scanning projects. Right off the top of my head I can think of three methods of dewarping book scans that have nothing do to with Google's methods. While Google's method is definitely quite interesting and seems like a great solution, it is by no means whatsoever the only way of accomplishing this.
Re:Playing Catch-up (Score:3, Insightful)
This may be a projector thing, but they are doing something of physical manipulation. It would be pretty much appropriate to be patented. The whole thing is physically transformative. Meanwhile, if someone made their own version using something different, it too, would be patentable/improvement patent, which is how the patent system is supposed to work.
To be clear, I'm saying the system as a whole should be patentable (infrared), but not the software used to decode it.
cool, but not patent-worthy (Score:4, Insightful)
This is useful and interesting, but doesn't seem particularly novel.
Projecting a known pattern onto a surface or using multiple cameras to determine the shape of a surface have been around for quite a while, so adding it to an OCR system doesn't seem like a big deal.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
No one said its a big deal, its simply a 'neat' way to accomplish the goal. As geeks we are generally interested in these neat ideas.
No one said Google was evil for patenting it.
No one said Google now has a monopoly on book scanning.
No one really said anything other than 'this is how they do it' and we all said 'neat'.
Re:Patent!!??!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I almost feel bad. I know what a radon transform is and I've taken a class on inverse problems.
My point was just that the common view of what is mathematics is rather anemic and quick to give engineering credit to relatively simple ideas. I suspect that the patent office has similar fallacious thinking.