Stanford's Tactile Display for Helping the Visually Impaired to Model 3D Objects

As a blind person wanting to get started with 3D printing (and maybe modeling, who knows), I found this project from Stanford University very appealing. It's like a pinboard where pins raise and drop to represent geometry of 3D objects, so that blind/visually impaired people can feel the 3D images. This would allow us to create 3D shapes through programming (with OpenScad for example), and check the results without sighted help.

Here is their news article explaining how the device works, and below is the demonstration video:

I know nothing about electronics, but I wonder what it takes to create such a device. Would creative people from the maker scene be able to create something similar at home, or is it something that only big universities with lots of resources would be able to produce? Anyone with knowledge of electronics, Arduino etc., has any idea?