Transforming Smartphones into Highly-Capable 3D Scanners for Reverse Engineering

The Pentagon has urged all US military branches to experiment with 3D printing technologies to save both time and money in manufacturing replacement parts. The USAF seeks to do this with a transformative 3D scanning system. This system must be capable of reverse engineering and 3D printing obsolete and current parts and/or components of aircraft and other assets. Quidient’s 3D scanning software solution meets this need with its unique approach to generating highly accurate 3D digital models. Quidient proposes to supply a 3D scanning software solution that will transform smartphones into Highly-Capable 3D scanners for Reverse Engineering. The goal is to alleviate the issue of reverse engineering obsolete and complex parts while creating a new 'Gold Standard' in 3D scanning and printing.  The core deliverable associated with this SBIR is software (the Software) that transforms smartphones into highly-capable 3D Scanners for Reverse Engineering (the Systems). The Software includes a 3D scanning application (the App) that is enabled by the Quidient Reality™ Generalized Scene Reconstruction (GSR) software platform (the Platform). The GSR Platform utilizes cutting edge innovations in 5D scene reconstruction (reconstructing the 3D matter field, including its geometry and materiality + 2D light flow) to create digital models of parts. By “highly-capable” we mean having attributes including high accuracy, completeness and ease-of-use. The App generates digital twin models that are accurate enough to reverse engineer materials of interest to the USAF. The App, when coupled with onsite 3D printing technologies, will support USAF additive manufacturing capabilities in maintenance depots, FOBs, and more. The Platform can run on standard mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) in the field. The novel 5D approach to scene reconstruction is a key feature of the platform that will enables hundreds, if not thousands of applications requiring robust scene scanning and modeling.