Intel has been working on a 3D scanner small enough to fit in the bezel of even the thinnest tablets. The company aims to have the technology in tablets from 2015, with CEO Brian Krzanich telling the crowd at MakerCon in New York on Thursday that he hopes to put the technology in phones as well.
"Our goal is to just have a tablet that you can go out and buy that has this capability," Krzanich said. "Eventually within two or three years I want to be able to put it on a phone."
Krzanich and a few of his colleagues demonstrated the technology, which goes by the name "RealSense," on stage using a human model and an assistant who simply circled the model a few times while pointing a tablet at the subject. A full 3D rendering of the model slowly appeared on the screen behind the stage in just a few minutes. The resulting 3D models can be manipulated with software or sent to a 3D printer.
"The idea is you go out, you see something you like and you just capture it," Krzanich explained. He said consumer tablets with built in 3D scanners will hit the market in the third or fourth quarter of 2015, with Intel also working on putting the 3D scanning cameras on drones.
The predecessor to the 3D scanning tablets demonstrated on stage were announced earlier this month in the form of the Dell Venue 8 7000 series Android tablet sports Intel's RealSense snapshot depth camera, which brings light-field camera-like capabilities to a tablet. It will be available later this year.
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