Microsoft Research Demoes 3D Face Scanning using only a Windows Phone

Microsoft Research has demonstrated a technique to turn your smartphone into a high quality 3D scanner using a simple to use app and cloud processing.

The challenge was to make sure the users follow a prescribed pathway in moving their phones, and the team achieved this by visualizing a 3D sphere around the object (in this case a head) and providing visual feedback for the scanning user to follow.

Microsoft notes the technolgy can be used to generate 3D models to support scenarios like AR furniture & space arrangement, e-commerce visualization, object recognition & search, etc. and then use these models in 3D printing.

See the video demo after the break.