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Comment by hexagonal | Hacker News Reader

Prediction: The router will be cheap, the special plywood with the calibration stickers will be very expensive.

Wouldn't it be more likely for the reverse to hold true? The razor-and-blades business model doesn't exactly apply here given the low level of technical sophistication required to print the calibration stickers. Constructing inkjet cartridges and machining modern razor blades are far more complex feats of engineering.

As the paper describes, the stickers can be applied "in any pattern so long as some tape is visible from every position that the device will move to". Thus, there is no need to align the stickers in a special pattern beforehand.

Anyone should be able to print similar calibration stickers on their own dime.

I imagine eventually they could do away completely with calibration stickers and just use regular surface tracking with any old plywood.

I wonder how a optical mouse sensor would react to the vibrations of the router.

But then you might want to use it with lets say glossy plain-coloured melamine sheets - most surface trackers have a lot of problems with this, so the calibration stickers are a cheap and reliable solution.

The only issue I can see is kick-back from the router bit, especially if you use larger diameter bits - this can throw the router significantly, and unless the control system compensates quickly yet gently, you may well lose tracking, leading to undefined results.

With optical mouse type tracking wouldn't you lose your position relative to other cuts if you lifted the router off the workpiece?

I imagine you can integrate information from a QR-code for global positioning and an optical mouse sensor for fine tuning

Isn't there a positioning system that it can use to track the router with accuracy? I'm not aware of any, but I'm sure it must exist.

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