An Alexandria-based digital camera company is bringing to market new products it believes will appeal to industries such as film, architecture and video gaming.
The company was established last year to come up with products that allow realistic photographic renderings of three-dimensional materials, capturing everything from fabric to the human head, Chief Executive Officer Craig Miller said Monday. It unveiled its first products at an industry trade show in San Diego this week.
Its Aguru-Scope imaging technology captures at once what an object looks like from any angle and how the light reflects on it, Miller said. The group licensed technology developed at New York University’s Courant Institute for the product, he said. Aguru hopes to sell the technology to customers in the film business and architects. The Aguru-Scanner is what Miller called “the world’s most amped-up Xerox machine.” The device scans a document 1 millimeter at a time and can capture it three-dimensionally. Miller said the technology will be useful for the digital archiving of paintings and artwork.
“The Mona Lisa will be destroyed someday, and our digital images are so good, you can’t tell the difference,” Miller said.
The Aguru-Dome is a camera with a 12-foot diameter, the second-largest in the world. A person sits underneath it and is photographed from a number of angles by high speed cameras, allowing the device to create realistic models of human heads. The technology is useful for such things as video game graphics, Miller said.
The company expects to announce its first customer later this week, and worked with advisors at companies such as Mitsubishi and Pixar to develop the products, he said.
Auguru’s business plan is to sell the cameras, rent them out for use and create an archive of imagery others can draw on for various purposes, Miller said.
