Gravity tablet - 3D sketching with Augmented Reality

 A group of students from the Royal College of Art have designed an augmented reality tool that allows designers to sketch in three dimensions. Gravity consists of a stylus and a tablet, familiar tools used for digital drawing, that have been adapted specifically for sketching in 3D. It was started in London in October 2013 as a group project between four Innovation Design Engineering students of the Royal College of Art.

 As the user draws above the clear acrylic sketchpad, radio signals are used to track the movements of the stylus from coordinates on the pad. These are sent to an Arduino board which is contained in a black panel that forms one edge of the pad. Controls on the pad can change the planes on which pen is sketching, meaning the drawing can be given volume. The drawings can be rotated and approached from any angle and other people can view the drawing using their own headset, and even add to it.

 From its video, it looks like the tool connects to a variety of augmented reality headsets and the RCA team has also connected it to an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset using the Unity3D game engine.



 The Gravity team unveiled publicly their innovation on February 5th for the Royal College of Art WIP Show 2014. Their website says they are now actively raising investments for their patent pending innovation with the strong vision that Gravity can change the way we create in 3D. I look forward to getting my hands on one and start creating. Now I just need to learn how to draw.