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Home Other Offbeat

Japanese device scans a book a minute

Digitizing knowledge just became much easier.

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
October 18, 2020
in Offbeat
Reading Time: 2 mins read
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If you’ve ever tried to copy a book, you know just what a drag it can be: it takes a lot of time and it’s so easy to get it wrong and mess up. But a new device developed in Japan solves all that, being able to automatically scan up to 250 pages a minute.

Developed at the University of Tokyo’s Ishikawa Oku Laboratory, the BFS-Auto can whoop through a book in one or two minutes — at that rate, it could go through a smaller library within a week. All the human operator needs to do is load books into the scanner and watch as the robot takes care of everything.

BFS-Auto can achieve high-speed and high-definition book digitization with remarkable ease. The books are digitized as documents, not images, which is also important as they are searchable and parseable.

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The device works in three stages: first, it has an automated high-speed page flipping system, which does pretty much what you’d expect from it. Then, it carries out a real-time 3D scan of the flipped pages, and ultimately, it turns the images into scannable and parseable documents.

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The system also has a technology to restore blurred or distorted images, which often happens with curled or warped pages. The 400 pixels per inch resolution also ensures great readability.

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However, the status of the BFS-Auto is rather unclear. It was supposed to hit the market in 2013, but as far as we can tell, it never did, although it’s an idea well worth pursuing.

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Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

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