If I want a picture than I will paint one. That’s why I don’t understand the attraction of jigsaw puzzles. That and the fact that there is always a piece missing.
Today’s invention offers a way to deal with the latter problem.
When you have assembled your jigsaw and found that a piece is awol, simply use your phone to photograph both the gap and the overall image.
When these are sent to an image database, the overall scene is identified and a new piece made with the correct image on it (by eg printing onto a laser cut piece of cardboard).
If the overall scene can’t be identified, then the new piece is made by interpolating the colour and texture around the edges of the missing piece, in a way that is similar to how the blind spot fills in perceptual content.
This would work very well for maybe 90% of jigsaw pieces, since they are designed to have hard-to-recognise, ie featureless, textural regions.
If you wanted a solution the same day, without having to wait for postal delivery of your piece, it might even be 3D printed in your home.
