Rapid 3D conceptual design based on hand gesture

The interaction method of current CAD systems has become one of the impediments of rapid 3D conceptual design. Because (1) the keyboard/mouse based interface limits the user to create 3D objects on a 2D plane; (2) current CAD systems are too complex for conceptual design and require users to be professionally trained. In this paper, we present an innovative rapid 3D conceptual design method based on hand gesture and motion capture system. A unique set of hand gestures for rapid 3D conceptual design based on CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) was proposed, with the requirement of ease of use and the suitability for real time continuous recognition. Real time hand gesture recognition was realized by static gesture (posture) recognition which is accomplished by skeleton model based template matching, and the dynamic gesture recognition which involves the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The recognized hand gestures were transformed into OpenSCAD scripting language and then the designed 3D geometry was generated and displayed on the screen. An opinion test was conducted to evaluate the system.