Robot book scanner captures 250 pg/min

Researchers in Japan have built a commercial book scanner capable of blasting through 250 pages-per-minute, meaning it can fully capture your average novel in under 60 seconds. Put another way, it would take less than ten minutes to scan the Oxford English Dictionary in its entirety. Still more impressive, the machine manages to take two high-res shots of every page (400 ppi) during the process, which it then utilizes to restore scans to a flat appearance with no signs of page deformation. All a human operator needs to do is load books into the scanner and watch as the fully-automated process rapidly "reads" through a book's contents. Dubbed the BFS-Auto, the machine should become available for commercial purposes sometime in 2013. In the meantime you can view its speedreading prowess firsthand in the clip below.