A Robotic Book Scanner

In Vernor Vinge's "Rainbow's End" a corporation is rapidly scanning the contents of the Ted Geisel library at UCSD using innovative technology: The machines grind the books up, chopping them into tiny bits, and vacuums up this book dust. Each tiny book particle is photographed as it is disposed of, and all of the images taken by the system are later stitched back together by powerful vision software.

The video above shows us an alternative to such destructive techniques. The robot turns the pages itself and GENTLY scans two pages at a time.

I think the librarians would favor this approach much better!