Minoru from Novo is the worlds first consumer 3D webcam
“Meet Minoru, meaning ‘Reality’ in Japanese, the World's first 3D webcam.
Connect Minoru to your PC and he will come alive, his eyes will light up and he will be looking at you in 3D.
Your friends and family can now see you in 3D over your favourite messaging program like Windows Live Messenger, Skype, AOL instant messenger, OoVoo and many others.
You can also take 3D photos or even shoot 3D videos and upload them to YouTube.
Minoru = Reality!
Minoru connects easily to your PC’s USB port just like any other webcam but that’s where the similarities end. The Minoru software has stereoscopic anaglyphic processing that lets you be seen in three dimensions. The red and cyan anaglyph image produced by Minoru can be viewed by anybody who is wearing commonly available red and cyan 3D glasses (five pairs included free with Minoru). Minoru can also be used as a standard 2D webcam for anyone who doesn’t have the 3D glasses at hand.
Minoru will appeal equally to the 3D novice and the stereoscopy enthusiast alike.
New 3D modes are being supported all the time such as 'Side by Side' and new 'Row Interlaced' mode, see the 'Download & Support' page for details.
Minoru is available now from major electronics retailers in the UK, EU and USA.
Latest news and developments from novo
Minoru enters the World of Robotics
Date posted: Monday, 15 June 2009
Minoru has found his way into the World of Robotics.
Some software has recently been written which can be used to turn the Minoru
webcam into an inexpensive ranging sensor. This could be used on any robot
with an onboard PC of one kind or another (such as a netbook), and should
perform well ...
http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?t=3358
http://code.google.com/p/sentience/wiki/MinoruWebcam
The Minoru is the first commercially available stereo webcam. It's primarily intended for entertainment - broadcasting stereo anaglyphs as a novel alternative to the usual webcam based video conferencing or blogging. However, it also makes a good inexpensive range sensor for robotics use.
Minoru and OpenCV
Date posted: Monday, 15 June 2009
Researchers at the Nagoya Institute of Technology have been carrying out some work in the field of computer vision using Minoru and OpenCV.
http://nma.web.nitech.ac.jp/fukushima/minoru/minoru3D-e.html
OpenCV is a computer vision library originally developed by Intel. It is free for commercial and research use under a BSD license. The library is cross-platform, and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PSP, VCRT (Real-Time OS on Smart camera) and other embedded devices. It focuses mainly on real-time image processing, as such, if it finds Intel's Integrated Performance Primitives on the system, it will use these commercial optimized routines to accelerate itself.
Released under the terms of the BSD license, OpenCV is open source software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCV
LINUX Supported
Date posted: Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Hi everybody,
I've just realized that my latest announcement to the linux-uvc-devel mailing list is awfully old. I had to do something about it, and I'm pleased to announce that the Linux UVC driver now supports the Minoru3D stereo camera.
The Minoru3D (http://www.minoru3d.com) is a cute, anthropomorphic device made of two UVC cameras mounted in a single case and spaced roughly the same distance apart as human eyes to get a stereoscopic effect.
The latest Linux UVC driver supports streaming from both cameras simultaneously at 30fps (up to 320x240) or 15fps (up to 640x480). You can download it from the Linux UVC Mercurial repository
(http://linuxtv.org/hg/~pinchartl/uvcvideo) or wait for Linux 2.6.30.
Please note that anaglyph (pseudo-3D image with red and blue or red and cyan components), "picture in picture" and "side by side" output provided by the Minoru3D driver on the Windows platform is not supported at this stage. This is an excellent opportunity for all of you to get into V4L2 application development and write a nice anaglyph Linux application :-)
I would like to thank Promotion & Display Technology for helping the Linux UVC driver development by providing both hardware samples and technical information.
Cheers,
Laurent Pinchart
We would like to thank Laurent for all his hard work in making this possible.
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