Handy-Potter - Make Things By Waving Your Hands In The Air
Written by Harry Fairhead   
Tuesday, 14 August 2012

It seems to be the season for new Kinect applications, all of which make you want to try them out. The latest is Handy-Potter, which you can use to create 3D objects simply by making their outline in the air.

3D input has always been a difficult problem. If you want to create a shape for manufacture by a 3D printer, say, then you have to learn to use a 3D CAD package and draw the object in great detail.

This may be workable but it lacks the interactivity of other methods of 3D creation - molding clay or throwing a pot say. Why not use the same methods?

handypotter

 

Kinect can tell where your hands are in space and so it is an easy next step to add a 3D object creation routine. You wave your hands in the air following the contour of the object you want to create and it appears on the screen as a rendered solid object. Watch the video to see it in action:

 

 

Its seems like a good idea, at least for getting a rough object into the CAD system for refinement. It's called Handy Potter because it converts the outline into a solid of rotation - just like a potter's wheel produces. The big difference is that you can specify how many times the outline is duplicated to create the solid. For example, duplicating it four times provides a rectangular cross section. It can also be used to deform the overall shape by "pushing" it so that the rotation axis is deformed. See the full paper for more details.

handypotter2

 

The restriction of symmetric objects is what makes it easy to use but, of course this is its limitation. It could be extended by other 3D operations, such as Boolean composition, general distortion and so on. These should be easy to add on to the basic application.

The project was Winner of the “All-Conference Best paper of ASME IDETC/CIE 2012” award

handypotter

 

More Information

Overview

Handy-Potter: Rapid 3d shape exploration through natural hand motions (pdf)

Related Articles

Want To Animate A Chair? Easy With Kinect

Further Update for Kinect Developer Toolkit

A Smart Kinect Trashcan

espbook

 

Comments




or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info

 

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, install the I Programmer Toolbar, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin,  or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

 

Banner


Use Javascriptmas To Hone Your Webdev Skills
08/12/2024

Every day until December 24th MDN, in partnership with Scrimba, is releasing a daily challenge, which as the name suggests requires you to practice your JavaScript skills. Each solution you submi [ ... ]



Copilot Improves Code Quality
27/11/2024

Findings from GitHub show that code authored with Copilot has increased functionality and improved readability, is of better quality, and receives higher approval rates than code authored without it.

 [ ... ]


More News

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 14 August 2012 )