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Smartphone-Enabled Replicators Are 3-5 Years Away, Caltech Professor Says 117

merbs writes: In just a few years, we could see the mass proliferation of DIY, smartphone-enabled replicators. At least, Caltech electrical engineering professor Ali Hajimiri and his team of researchers thinks so. They've developed a very tiny, very powerful 3D imager that can easily fit in a mobile device, successfully tested its prowess, and published the high-res results (PDF) in the journal Optics. Hajimiri claims the imager may soon allow consumers to snap a photo of just about anything, and then, with a good enough 3D printer, use it to create a real-life replica "accurate to within microns of the original object."
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Smartphone-Enabled Replicators Are 3-5 Years Away, Caltech Professor Says

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  • by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @05:50PM (#49425729)
    And you thought dick pics were a problem...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Says random PhD student. I wonder which one of us will be right in the end.
    I'm thinking it will be me.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @05:53PM (#49425745)

    Bad headline: "Smartphone-Enabled Replicators Are 3-5 Years Away, Caltech Professor Says"

    Good headline: "Smartphone-Enabled 3-D Scanners Are 3-5 Years Away, Caltech Professor Says"

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      yeah.. and if they by replicator mean the replicator(tm)(c)(r)(patented) series of 3d printers from makerbot.. hmm. actually I don't think they're smartphone enabled.

      you could "smartphone enable" any of the open source 3d printers on the market(majority of the market, actually) by hooking a raspberry pi to it(or some with more advanced boards you don't need the raspberry even).

      it's just talking about a decent 3d scanner resolution for a smarpthone. 123d-catch does crappy resolution today already.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      https://xkcd.com/678/

    • by Sleuth ( 19262 ) *

      Hahahaha, well, no. Your headline is not nearly as sensational!

  • by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @05:53PM (#49425749)
    Is a replicator sensor on a phone really that useful? A camera is nice to have around all the time and even that often isn't used much by many phone owners. Yes, this thing is small but space is at a premium on phones. How often do you look at something and say "I wish I could create a mediocre quality 3D printed version of this"?

    I don't see it as a mainstream feature. Maybe an option. Maybe useful for measuring things.
    • ^append... I didn't mean to imply this isn't pretty cool. It is.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ThePackager ( 562279 )
      Perhaps it only peripherally relates, but... I'm interested in the team that recycles all these damn plastic wrappers, bags, bottles and endless polymer stuff into usable 3D printer raw material. Now let's se THAT breakthrough!
    • by AuMatar ( 183847 )

      It doesn't need to be built into the phone. If people find it useful, connecting via USB or Bluetooth would be sufficient. Then if people use that it can move into the phone in another 3-5 years.

    • by Idou ( 572394 )

      . . . really that useful?

      Typical /.er comment. . . I think the first such comment made by a ./er was about the Internet, back when Slashdot was still a BBS. . . and we all know how the Internet turned out to be useless. . .

      • we all know how the Internet turned out to be useless...

        Give it a few years and the marketing companies, spammers, black hat hackers and governments will finish the job.

    • How often? All the time. Only I constantly wish for improvement, so that "mediocre" can eventually be left out.

      How often you look at something and think the same is apparently "same as a person with no concept of the future, with no imagination, and who is dead inside and is best left alone with a unloaded handgun, some bullets, and a bottle of sloe gin."

      Luddite.

  • that the "accurate within microns" part is only applicable if you feed it some scaling information.

    Otherwise, it's going to only be as accurate as the person guessing the size of the original.

    • by slew ( 2918 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @06:41PM (#49425965)

      that the "accurate within microns" part is only applicable if you feed it some scaling information.

      Otherwise, it's going to only be as accurate as the person guessing the size of the original.

      AFAICT, the technique used by this imager is FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) which basically give you a very accurate time-of-flight measurement. In this type of system, the received optical frequency difference from the transmitted frequency is measured by optical-coherent mixing and sensing the resultant beat signal frequency. Apparently this groups contribution to this technique is to measure both the phase and amplitude of this beat signal digitally so multiple algorithms can be deployed to analyze the beat signal.

      In any case, given a very accurate distance to an object, the solid angle projection to the imaged object, and some basic optical system calibration data, it is presumably fairly straightforward compute the actual size of the object w/o guessing.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        This is of course just a first step. The ultimate would be to be able to get a precise reading *within* an object, not just "what your sensor can read from where you stand". And not just geometry, but composition as well. And not just geometry and composition, but also discontinuities - for example, a screw in a socket may look like a continuous piece of metal even at high resolution, but there's a very important discontinuity there that you need to detect. And of course your 3d print service either needs t

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          There's also some tremendous software needs in this regard. Sure, the basics are just being able to take scans and print them (although as we all know there's nothing simple about that). But just on the UI side, there's going to be good demand for filters / tools that can repair common types of damage / wear on the part. And many users are going to want to be able to customize their part, so you need everyday-user-friendly 3d modelling that's ideally possible to do straight on the smartphone. Then what abou

  • by neminem ( 561346 ) <neminem@gmaLISPil.com minus language> on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @06:02PM (#49425791) Homepage

    I *can* imagine the possibility that within 5 years, we'd have portable enough 3d imagers and powerful enough phones to both stick the hardware in a phone-sized device and have a phone-sized device run the required software. I have no real understanding of how the physics of that would really work, granted, but it doesn't seem totally outside the bounds of possibility.

    But that's just the input. I *can't* really imagine the possibility that within 5 years, we'd have powerful enough *printers* to take the output of such a precise scanner, and recreate it anywhere near so precise, even if you're only talking about an object made entirely out of one or two kinds of plastic, which is unlikely to be the sort of object people would really want to "replicate". "Just about anything"? Yeah right.

    Wake me up when we can replicate food, say, and have it taste the same as the original. Will we see that in my lifetime? Maybe, if I'm lucky. Will we see that in 3-5 years? I'd bet quite a lot of money on "no", and I'm not a betting sort of person.

    • I, for one, welcome our brave, new, micron-accurate D&D action figure and spork overlords.

    • Wake me up when we can replicate food, say, and have it taste the same as the original. Will we see that in my lifetime? Maybe, if I'm lucky. Will we see that in 3-5 years? I'd bet quite a lot of money on "no", and I'm not a betting sort of person.

      Just a heads up 3D printed food is pretty big

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • I'm guessing you've only seen things printed on FDM 3D printers? Get yourself a sample made on a SLS printer. Those are pretty accurate.

    • Wake me up when we can replicate food, say, and have it taste the same as the original. Will we see that in my lifetime? Maybe, if I'm lucky.

      "He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."

      I think we'll be seeing cold fusion and flying cars before perfectly replicated food.

  • by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @06:04PM (#49425799) Journal

    Might be time for a remake of Weird Science.

  • i done took a pitcher of hit.
  • by Moof123 ( 1292134 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @06:12PM (#49425833)

    Great, you can scan something and then print it in crappy plastic. Big whoop.

    Seriously, 3D printing has been around for a while now, and I am still waiting to see anything beyond the Gee-Whiz level of cool or useful. You can only make so many money clips, pencil holders, and miniature busts before it becomes clear it is just a toy. Industrial ones that can print in metal are a different story, but the crappy plastic extruders are never going to take over the world or replace China's factories.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Might look into some of the exotic filaments that have been coming out - flexibles, thermochrome, brass/stainless/copper/iron fills, glow in the dark, woodfilll, bamboo, nylon, etc. Even the metal sintering 3d printers are starting to hit consumer level prices.

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      What we really need are "Member 11-99 Foundation" license plate holders -- enough for every car in California.

    • by idji ( 984038 )
      what about http://www.space.com/28095-3d-... [space.com] ?
    • Isn't the current movement towards optimization of expensive assets that idle 95% of the time - like cars (UBER); spare bedrooms (AirBnB) etc?

      So there's certainly a really advanced multi-material 3D printer in our future -- probably with integrated circuit board printing and a bunch of other crazy futuristic options) but even if I bought one when it arrives on the scene, it is going to be a rather pricey item (with pricey consumables) that sits around unused a lot of the day and night . Just like lik
      • Probably not. Unless your needs run to Star Wars figurines, plastic spoons or other objects made primarily out of a single material, the next couple of generation printers are going to be pretty unrewarding. If you a running a prototyping shop and need an object that is going to be part of another object, you might find that one of the many fabrication shops already in existence can help you create the object of your desires. It might be CNC milled, it might be printed via laser sintering, it might be cr

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          The current generation of high end 3d printers are very rewarding, and I say this as someone who's used them. The print quality is superb. And no, you don't generally go to existing metal shops which have a CNC miller, you need a shop that has a 3d printer, the two tools are used for different roles. If you have some big part with simpler geometry that you need, you use CNC milling. If you have some small part with complex geometry, you use 3d printing. 3d printing services are already plentiful on the net.

    • Toy... or a rapid prototyping device that can speed up development of a manufactured product, saving the company fairly large sums of money and more importantly time (as more companies succeed or fail by being first to market).

      I know which one my company views 3D printing as.

    • Why is it whenever a 3D printing thread comes up, someone gest modded +5 insightful for their lack of imagination and knowledge. Make no mistake, the parent has no insight because he is flat out wrong.

      I also find the idea that the $50k stratasys printers with it's $300 reels of ABS, uh, sorry, crappy plastic, is used to print money clips, pencil holders and miniture busts. And not only that, but with an annual revenue of $500,000,000.

      3D printers generally come under the heading of "rapid prototyping" where

      • People don't deny that having a machine that does rapid prototyping is a good idea, it's the extrapolation of current capabilities into "in five years time you'll be able to scan a Ferrari on your smartphone and print out an exact copy" that gets annoying.
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          See, that's the problem with you people. First you insist that 3d printers can only produce low quality plastic junk, and then when faced with the reality that they actually can produce superb products, you treat them as if they're just some sort of incremental change on earlier systems, as if 3d printers are just some form of advanced CNC system.

          They are not.

          3d printing is a completely different technology to milling, moulding, die forming, etc - your "traditional" manufacturing techniques. You could say t

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      Why is it that this day in age we're still needing to point out that Not All 3D Printing Is Makerbots? If you wanted a professional looking poster printed out would you try to do it on a cheapo home inkjet? You're declaring the term "3d printing" as only applying to "crappy plastic extruders". The "industrial ones that can print in metal", as you put it, are *also* 3d printers. And home users *can* get prints from them, there's lots of online print services. My personal favorite is iMaterialize [materialise.com], as I like t

  • This story still needs drones and twitter. I am disappointed.
  • Methods are improving [npr.org] and materials are improving [shapeways.com]. As costs continue to drop and more materials become available, look around your home and ask: What objects could be replaced with replicas made of metal, ceramics, even advanced composites [engadget.com] of wood or stone. A composite maplewood desk. A custom designed set of steel silverware. Porcelain plates. Ceramic bowls. Iron composite free weights. I have a painting I purchased at an art museum. It would be neat to be able to snap a photo, get home and have a replica
    • Why would you care if these were printed? You want porcelain plates? Look it up on Amazon. You want a custom desk? Look it up on the general Internet. These things aren't going to be made at home on your makerbot, nor are they going to be produced at Kinkos+.

      You've made absolutely no case for 3D printing here.

    • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      When I look around my home I see mostly multi-material complex objects (like electronics) or items that are not economically viable to 3D print.
      Mass produced items use just the right material and the right process so that it can fullfill its function while optimizing costs. As a result, it will always end-up cheaper.
      On a personal level, I think the exception is art : figures, decorative objects, jewelry, etc... And even then, you need to actually have a relatively precise idea of what you want, because if y

  • Physical keys. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stonefoz ( 901011 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @06:46PM (#49425983)

    Today, anyone with some determination and a few photographs can replicate keys. How soon will it be till the average criminal has access to an instant key duplicator? A high quality scanner could mark the end of even the top rated physical keys.

    • I think you just made an argument against fingerprint-enabled locks too.

      • There are better arguments against fingerprint locks. They can't be changed even when they need to be. If more than one place is using a fingerprint, they have all the keys.

    • Anyone with silly putty and a dremel can duplicate keys, and has been able to for some time. All this does is make it easier if you have an appropriate 3d printer. If it becomes an issue, then keys can easily start featuring retractable covers. Or maybe this lock will finally see its heyday. [io9.com]
      • Silly putty and a Dremel of course requires at least some amount of practice and skill. At some point 3d printing will just require a criminal, stealing a 3d printer...

    • Today, anyone with some determination and a few photographs can replicate keys. How soon will it be till the average criminal has access to an instant key duplicator? A high quality scanner could mark the end of even the top rated physical keys.

      If I need a spare front door key, I take my existing one to my friendly locksmith and they make a duplicate,

      Since most people don't walk around with their keys round their necks, to get a duplicate key 3D printed the criminal would have to steal/borrow it, just like now.

      I have no great faith in 3D printers transforming our world into some sort of post-scarcity utopia, but your concern is a bit like saying "what would happen if a murderous psychotic stranger printed a replica broadsword and cut someone's

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      This is an easy problem to solve. Just have a retractable shroud over the key that automatically gets pushed back into the handle part when inserted in the lock. That way there won't be an opportunity to photograph the key.

  • I'll file this next to my "breakthrough battery tech that's just around the corner" file...

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday April 07, 2015 @07:27PM (#49426189) Journal
    Before we get too far with this thing, what has this guy predicted 5 years ago? How did that turn out? Without some calibration there is no reason to pay attention to his predictions more than the predictions of Satguru Somereallylongnameanandaswami.
    • I'm going to give myself future credit by predicting this: in five years, the year will be 2020 and 2010 will be ten years ago.

  • Either you could 3D print a statue of your hot naked girlfriend, or you could take micron-level measurements of her body parts.
  • Being able to 3D scan something from your phone would be neat, if a bit niche, but the printer will not be mobile, and just like the current desktop scanners, your highly precise model will only be of the visible OUTSIDE of the object. That might be fine if you just want a cheap plastic replica of that sculpture, but pretty much useless if you wanted a replacement for anything but the crudest of mechanical parts.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      Of course, objects that are visible in the visible spectrum can be translucent or transparent at other frequencies. That said, translucency (and reflection for that matter) are confusing for LIDAR. But there's potential there for some day in the (non-immediate) future.

  • Good idea: Star Trek-style replicators that can produce food or whatever gizmo we need to save the ship.

    Bad idea: Stargate SG-1 replicators that want to wipe out humanity.

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