surface scanners

[Dave Long]

- run wires on the shield and on the sheets, then hook up the
  shield to a stepper motor.  Slowly "clear" the toy by lowering
  the shield onto the nails until they're all pushed back to
  ground, and sense which nail circuits went from "break" to
  "make" on each step.  For faster scanning of a large surface,
  run boustrophedically, and step the shield back out on every
  other scan.

Would existing programs for stitching together visual mosaics
be largely suitable for stitching together a solid mosaic?

-Dave