ARCHITECTS may one day walk onto a greenfield site and conjure up the edifice
they want to build with a click of their fingers. A wall here, an atrium
there鈥攁ll the legwork will be done by a wearable virtual reality
system.
Wayne Peikarski and Bruce Thomas of the University of South Australia in
Mawson Lakes, Adelaide, last week showed a conference on wearable computers in
Zurich how their system would work. A GPS satellite-navigation receiver will
track the wearer as they move around the site, while a headset-mounted sensor
detects subtle movements to pin down their precise position. Using a dataglove
they can work their way through a set of menus to create or delete objects such
as walls, stairs and doors.
The architect鈥檚 creation appears in a VR headset, superimposed on the scene
around them. Crucially, it doesn鈥檛 need to be designed on a PC first. They can
step back and change the shape, size and position of an object by 鈥済rabbing鈥� it,
even if it is some distance away. But Thomas concedes the current technology is
far from perfect: the image rendering is sometimes jumpy. But he believes an
improved computer and more precise GPS systems would enhance performance
dramatically.
Advertisement
