This Scanning Robot Can Outpace Any Speed Reader

The DC Comics superhero known as the Flash is famous for being able to run really, really, fast. But his super speed powers extend beyond footraces. He can vibrate through solid objects and travel to other dimensions and through time. But in addition to his physical skills, the Flash can use his powers to gain knowledge.

In fact, at several times in the past, the Flash has read the entire contents of the public library in mere seconds in order to gain important knowledge he needed to save the people of his city. While I consider myself a pretty speedy reader, there is a page-scanning robot out there that could give the Scarlet Speedster a run for his money.

The robot, known as the BFS-Auto book scanner, can handle up to 250 pages in a minute – that is over four pages a second, if you are counting. It is designed to make book digitization a lot simpler and easier. Basically, you just have to load your books into the machine, and it will rifle through the tome, taking two picture of each page, one while the page is turning and one while it is flat. Embedded software helps stabilize the page images.

Take a look at the BFS-Auto in action:

Unfortunately, the robot is not yet available to put under the tree of your favorite book lover for this holiday season. Still, it’ll be out in 2013, so you can start saving your entire library to your favorite handheld device. Even better, you can start taking books out of the library and digitizing them, hoping someday to be as smart as the Flash. Just be careful if you decide to take on the Weather Wizard or Captain Cold…