From Sense to Print: Towards Automatic 3D Printing from 3D Sensing Devices

In this paper, we introduce the From Sense to Print system. It is a system where a 3D sensing device connected to the cloud is used to reconstruct an object or a human and generate 3D CAD models which are sent automatically to a 3D printer. In other words, we generate ready-to-print 3D models of objects without manual intervention in the processing pipeline. Our proposed system is validated with an experimental prototype using the Kinect sensor as the 3D sensing device, the KinectFusion algorithm as our reconstruction algorithm and a fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer. In order for the pipeline to be automatic, we propose a semantic segmentation algorithm applied to the 3D reconstructed object, based on the tracked camera poses obtained from the reconstruction phase. The segmentation algorithm works with both inanimate objects lying on a table/floor or with humans. Furthermore, we automatically scale the model to fit in the maximum volume of the 3D printer at hand. Finally, we present initial results from our experimental prototype and discuss the current limitations.