Supporting the Industrial Design Process With Spatial Augmented Reality

Our research involves using Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) for industrial design. SAR allows us to project onto physical objects to give them a different appearance. This is beneficial for industrial design because we can project a design for a device directly onto a physical prototype. This projected design can be interactive which also means it can be modified in real time. An example of this method of prototyping is shown in Figure 1. We constructed a low-fidelity prototype of a car dashboard out of medium-density fibreboard (MDF) and painted it with a matte white paint. We then project a design onto the prototype. The use of AR for design has been investigated in the past. Car manufacturers have used AR for evaluating a car interior design [2]. Our design evaluation system differs in the display technology used. Our SAR implementation is based on Shader Lamps [1] which uses calibrated projectors to change the appearance of objects.