With e-books quickly becoming more and more popular, one can forget about the vast amounts of printed books yet to be digitized.

Masatoshi Ishikawa, a professor at the  University of Tokyo, is trying to get those books scanned as quickly as possible. He has created a super fast scanner aptly-named the “Super Vision Chip.” Operating at 500fps, the camera scans images at 1280×1024 pixels; the device can scan a 200 page book in a minute, using both laser light and regular light. The technology can be used for other purposes — Ishikawa has already built it into robots he’s created. In any case, it’s definitely a cool way to keep old media fresh.

Video after the ‘leap’

[via Slashdot]