Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner [video]

When I read the title I thought of another IDEA that I've had bumping around in my head that would be pretty cool.

Put down two model railroad straightaways next to each other, with two locomotives, use them as a base to attach a 3d-printer arm across and "print" a model railroad diorama, incrementally moving the locomotives to print each slice.

In other words, a flatbed 3d printer where one axis is the locomotives moving across your railroad layout. I think it could rejuvenate model railroads if you could print mountains, towns, streambeds, roads, etc...

Random thought: If you stick a very small adhesive mirror to the outside window before boarding, then footage "looking down" at the regularly-spaced railroad ties could contribute to information about the current speed and acceleration.

Well, on a straight section anyway, if you turn, the inner/outer edges will appear differently-spaced...

Basically the inverse of https://daniel.lawrence.lu/photos/ or https://trains.jo-m.ch/ ;)

I love this so much! This is such a cool hack, just for the sake of it. Amazing hacking and amazing art!

In the preso, she has said the full size output is on the website-

can anyone see what that link is? I didn't find it on the video page, but I might've just missed it.

It would have been pretty easy to use a horizontal line scanner to get image speed.

In any case, it seems that using a full frame video would be much easier to post process since frame to frame correlation tells you everything you need to know about motion.

they need to connect with the skunkworks team, they solved this problem on sr 71 long time back !

Using the camera as a scanner has a long history in satellite cameras and other aerial photography