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What an incredible write up. Detailed without being boring or glossing over too much of the technique.
by generj 3y ago
What an incredible write up. Detailed without being boring or glossing over too much of the technique.
- mrwizrd 3y agoI concur, it really is excellent. I wish I knew the total time investment it took to do and document all of this. It must have taken a very long time, not to mention the proofreading!
- volzo 3y agoMost work was done as a part of my day job. It took about half a year. Significant amount of that time is for writing an academic paper. Same content as the blog post, 10x less readers, 10x more time...
- pimlottc 3y agoI thought it took way too long to get to the point — why would you want to make a touchable lens? How would you use it? What would it even look like in practice? Background is great but first give me a reason to get excited about the actual device.
- prox 3y agoMaybe like a super versatile trackball? Just guessing here.
- robotsarecool 3y agoId imagine a flexible skin added to the outside of a robot containing lightpipes or fiberoptics coming back to a camera. This lets you detect collision on the outside of a robot at 30-60fps extremely cheaply. Cheap passive collision detection is missing from robotics and this is a step in the right direction. With multimaterial 3d printing you can make a wide variety of different shells for robotics which can automatically detect failures, collisions, damage and stress for the cost of the plastic and a camera sensor.
- mhb 3y ago6 DOF input device using just a camera and blob of silicone? So <~$1?
- volzo 3y agoSolely the cost the materials is about 2 USD when bought in small quantities, but I am using the least expensive clear silicone. Buying the expensive stuff (Smooth-On's Solaris for example) is about 2x-3x the cost but available in much larger quantities.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI look forward to someone cloning this, driving down the cost, and putting it on crowsupply/sparkfun or somewhere. (I mean that as praise, not malice.) I assume decent results can be achieved with a super-cheap camera module, if the optics are a good match to the silicone part.
- marci 3y ago"How would you use it?" is the entire video's point. Now, what would that look like in practice. I think you should first forget about the form factor. I think the use of a smartphone (at this stage) is mostly convenience. The best lens/sensor/cpu/gpu combos are sold in this package. When the first webcams came out, I think I would have been skeptical if someone told me "this will be a mouse soon". Today, most mice are basically very VERY low resolution webcams with buttons[1]. Maybe a new type of controller, musical instruments, or an entirely new thing will come out of this... Or nothing much, like the two research paper mentionned. In a mouse form factor i think it could be use for some of the functions of a spacemouse[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mouse#Optical_sensor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_mouse#Optical_sensor [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHBgNGnTiK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHBgNGnTiK4 ( I Made my own Space Mouse for Fusion 360 using Magnets (DIY) ). Just check the intro to have an idea on the use of spacemouse.