Digital Fabrication Using Mixed Reality Technology

Mixed Reality (MR) technology is a combination of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), which is recently very popular in game engine and art work presentation. In digital fabrication field, robotic technology is still most normally used, because we human beings can’t have a live feedback between real world and digital data. However, as the rapid development of MR technology, we can easily add digital data into the real world only by a smartphone and a pair of VR glasses, so now it’s possible to build a system to guide human workers to complete nonstandard fabrication jobs instead of robotic arms. So based on the recent researches, the author built an android software and a set of MR equipment. By loading digital model data in the software, the smartphone can recognize a target image through the camera, and figure out the 3D position of this target image, so that the digital model can be shown as an image upon real world image taken by the camera. After wearing the headset equipment, users can see a live updated digital model in the real world space. Using this system, an experimental wooden blocks assembly was tested. Its success points out that, un-trained workers can complete nonstandard fabrication works with the help of MR technology. So we can tell, MR technology will be widely used in start-up companies and student researches in the future.