[otaviogood]

Me and my team used these yellow tracking dots to reconstruct shredded documents for a DARPA shredder challenge over a decade ago. You can see our program highlight the dots as we reconstruct the shredded docs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzZDhyrjdVo Thanks to that, we were able to win by a large margin. :)

[computerdl]

Oh wow, I remember hearing about this challenge on Daily Planet when I was still in elementary school. It's super cool seeing a follow up, it brought back a hidden memory.

Super cool demo btw

[AceJohnny2]

and here I thought the library shredder/scanner in Vinge's Rainbows End was just sci-fi loosely based on gene sequencing...

(I mean it is, but seeing this almost real-world implementation is fun!)

[dylan604]

what was the process of getting each of the shredded pieces scanned for your program to use. I'm guessing that process could have a write up on it just as much as the solver. there's definitely a personality type that can handle that type of mess

[otaviogood]

DARPA scanned the shreds. The funny thing is, they didn't want to shred the original paper, so first they photocopied the paper in a high quality color copier, shredded it, and scanned it. And that's where the little yellow dots came from. :D