Students at London, UK’s Royal College of Art have created a system where users can draw in 3D by utilising virtual or augmented reality glasses and a special sketch pad and pen. Named Gravity, the system developed by the Innovation Design Engineering students sheds light on what the future of collaboration could look like in business and education applications – as well as its obvious possibilities in the field of design.
The sketch pad is fitted with radio frequency sensors which record pen movements and transmit them to a microcontroller on the pad. The user will see their lines drawn through augmented reality glasses wirelessly connected to the sketch pad. The user can then move the drawing around and build upon it from any angle.
Other people can also join in the process, meaning the system may in the future become a competitor in the field of collaborative tools alongside interactive whiteboards and displays. The idea behind the system was to create a design tool that eliminates the ‘imagination bottleneck ‘ that occurs when free flowing ideas outlined in 2D have to conform to rigid parameters in software like CAD in order to become 3D designs.