Matterport develops tech to scan the physical world in 3D

At Silicon Valley Base Matter Work, Mac Bell and his co-founders, Dave (Galispec?) and Mike BB are inventing new technology that captures the physical world in 3D. To make it work, they're using the spatting pending 3D scanner and software. You can wave around the hand held scanner and the hand held scanner captures 3D snapshots of the world. And then our software automatically fetches those snapshots together. For example, say you wanted to scan a small sized room. Hold the device and start capturing objects in the physical space. Lawrence (Shaffer?) is an associate with the company. As you take in these scans, a real time model actually comes out and the point of it is that you want to be able to see where the holes are, where you haven't scanned so that you can go back and just paint those areas if you wanna think of it as spray painting and making sure that you get every object that you really want. The software allows you to scan any part of the room in any order. They'll liken it to a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces. As you do a scan, you can look at the display and see the 3D model of the space around you coming together. When the model starts appearing on the screen, it's still a working progress. The next step is to take the pre-model, send it up to the company's private (cloud?) for processing then Voila. A high rest, 3D image of a physical space. So we all believe that technology could be a game changer in a variety of fields. Anywhere, people need to document a 3D space. So that's architect construction company, re-modelers. There are millions of people in the US that work with 3D spaces and object on a daily basis. The system is definitely high tech but it also has limitations. Wanna capture a model of the outside world? Not yet or how about a really small object difficult to scan? Still Bell says these are temporary bugs. The technology will get better over time. Ultimately, (Materfort?) wants the device be as easy to use a point and shoot camera. Today, 3D capturing systems cost in hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's a challenge for businesses to get access. But Bell hopes to make it cheap, fast and consumer-friendly. The sensors are going to get smaller and more integrated. So some time the next 2 to 5 years, I expect to see 3D capture devices and tablets. So then everyone with their iPad 5 or whatever else, could just pull that out and do a quick 3D scan and then share it with the work. For CNET News, I'm (Simmy?) Duff.