A Desktop 3D Modeling System Controllable by Mid-air Interactions

Remarkable progresses of fabrication devices such as 3D printers and laser cutters allow nonprofessionals to manufacture their own products. They should, however, iterate design, production, and refinement processes through trial and error. Additionally, they must gain a good 3D modeling skill to make the products unique and different. In this paper, we propose a 3D modeling system allowing users to easily design a new product by directly comparing a graphical model to a real product without scanning the real one. The system visualizes the graphical model as a mid-air image that can coexist with the real product in a same physical space. The system also enables the users to manipulate the graphical model through a set of simple hand gestures. We conducted a preliminary experiment to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system.