US Edition First announced on crowd sourcing website Kickstarter in September, the Structure Sensor 3D Scanner – by app developer Occipital – hit its $100,000 (£62,000) funding target in an impressive three and a half hours. And the money kept rolling in long after that, reaching almost a million dollars a month later.
How? Because this innovative gadget – which clips onto your mobile or tablet – is able to capture full three-dimensional models of objects then store them on your machine.
Indeed, it can map an entire 3D model of a single room. All you need to do is attach it to your device and spin around on a single point. The camera uses a system of LEDs, which mean it can also work in the dark. And that makes it ideal for The Cool List.
Clearly, there’s a public appetite for an affordable, high-resolution scanner like this. For those interested in interior design, 3D printing or technical drawing, it's a revolutionary product. And, as you can measure distances between objects, it could work wonders for furniture shoppers, too.
Once the Structure Sensor (which costs around £250) has done its work, there are a large number of augmented reality applications that can be used alongside it, so you can interact with the 3D models you’ve created.
In the future, you might even be able to scan a product you like while out, then print out your own 3D version at home.
Traditionally, mapping a room in this way is a hugely expensive process and requires bulky technology compared to the slim and lightweight Structure Sensor.
This innovation also highlights the indisputable fact that tablets are rapidly becoming the future of mobile computing. Designers and developers are building cutting-edge technology to work with a portable product, while keeping the size and expense down.
It can only be a matter of time before similar Kickstarter projects take the world of tablet computing even further.
The Cool List is a definitive line-up of the technology trends set to revolutionise the modern world. Curated in celebration of the new Braun CoolTec shaver, the world's first shaver with active cooling technology, it brings together all that is new and exciting in the spheres of gadgetry and innovation.
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