New device about to go public called Leap. Hard to explain so you kind of need to look at the videos. It's a small $70 3D scan device that claims sub mm accuracy . I can see a hop and a skip worth of development and one might be able to scan and save 3D hoof data pretty easy and regularly. (Exactly how it works is hush hush fo rnow, so it may not work in the end, but I found it intriguing....) Worthy application?... 30 second mark of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=MYgsAMKLu7s and 50 second mark of this: View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d6KuiuteIA
For what purpose? If you have a mathematical model of the surface of a horse's hoof, what do you do with it?
Maybe not useful for day to day work. (I come at this from an owner, non-farrier perspective.) But I thought it might have a place in the "Owner communicating with Farrier on the Internet" world. Or potentially as an archiving tool to capture the "before" or progress for special cases? That kind of stuff. If nothing else, some people just like fancy tech, and it might be a bells and whistles sales tool. "Here's your horses hoof [while spinning it around in 3D on a screen]" Or because it's original purpose is as a non-contact computer mouse, it might simply help as an interface to work on a computer in a dirty environment.
