Elon Musk And Researchers Present Amazing Hand Gesture Controlled 3D Shaping

Both Elon Musk and university researchers have independently presented revolutionary new design tools for creating 3D objects with bare hands last week. Using a depth-sensing camera and advanced software algorithms to interpret hand movements and gestures, it’s possible to model a wide variety of 3D shapes within a few seconds.

Elon Musk's company SpaceX is developing the new tool by pairing a Leap Motion gesture reader with its Siemens NX computer aided design software and also using 3D glasses.

Purdue University researchers are working on a tool they call Shape-It-Up. “With Shape-it-up, our goal is to make the designer an integral part of the shape modeling process during early design, in contrast to current CAD tools, which segregate 3D sweep geometries into procedural 2D inputs, in a non-intuitive and cumbersome process requiring extensive training,” says Karthik Ramani, the Donald W. Feddersen Professor in the school of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, in Indiana, US.

"It allows people to express their ideas rapidly and quickly using hand motions alone,” Ramani says. “We're democratizing the design process. You don't have to be an engineer to use this.” Ramani is the director of C Design Lab, where mechanical engineering and computer sciences meet to create geometry-inspired algorithms for natural creation, reasoning, and sensing and response to both virtual and physical artifacts. -- i SGTW