It’s Spring, and 2031 is off to a good start. The frigid winter temperature is finally breaking and the high of the impending warmer months has come over you. Inspired, you start tackling the first DIY project of the season.
Using your lightweight AR glasses to help your decision-making, you land on a perfect outdoor sofa that satisfies your deck needs – a good looking three-seater that fits the physical space without interfering with the general flow of deck traffic. Lovely.
With decisions made, you make a single hand gesture to place your materials order from the local Lowes. The materials arrive in your driveway just after lunch. You queue up an Oldies playlist while gathering your tools. Donning your AR glasses, it’s time to follow the step-by-step DIY guide while Smokey Robinson takes you cruisin’. You finish mistake-free and with no rework. You laugh at how much harder things were in the days of reading paper and PDF instructions.
Welcome back to 2021 – Building something with your own hands can be incredibly rewarding. As we all know from experience, it can also be immensely frustrating and a true test of patience. Why? A major challenge is we must rely on 2D drawings and instructions to describe how to build something in a 3D world.
Plans are abstract and difficult to interpret. Our brains work extra hard to translate what we see on paper with where things need to go in the real world. Thus, mistakes and misunderstandings are common. And this is why you put the middle rack upside down on your Ikea bookshelf 🙃
Let’s see if AR can provide a more brain-friendly experience.
I will be using the latest in AR to help assemble a custom piece of outdoor furniture. For this project, I am using Microsoft HoloLens 2 AR glasses. The 3D model was created in Revit by Anton Kaplun, based on plans by Ana White. The software I’m using was built by the Spectar team and for enterprise customers, but I’m totally repurposing for this badass homemade project!
I get my material ready for assembly. Starting with a cutlist, I cut each piece of wood to length. Similar pieces are grouped together and color coded. These colors correspond to the colors in the 3D model.
With my material all ready to roll, I set out to assemble the side and arm supports. Looking at the 3D model in my glasses, I know I need two red pieces and an orange for each side. Understanding how they fit together is clear. Both what I need and where I need it to go becomes a simple exercise with little room for misinterpretation…or head scratching, hammer tossing confusion.
Take a look at the GIF. You’ll notice I’m seeing only the pieces needed for step 1. Using the menu, I’m able to select what step I’m on and see only what I need to see. It further keeps everything simple.
The next few steps to complete the base are equally free of uncertainty. My actual woodworking technique and glue up abilities have room for improvement, but I’m happy with the status to this point.
Side note – One of the really magical, and killer selling points of AR, is the capability to tie important information directly to an object itself. Traditionally, if I want to know the details on a particular part in this assembly, I have to refer to 2D plans on paper or an iPad. Worse, on more complicated projects, I need to reference a part number and look up the details in an Excel spreadsheet or similar. That ain’t easy or efficient. With AR, I simply interact with the part I want info on, and boom! It appears right on the object itself.
With the base complete, I move on to the back section. For this step, I am not using AR. I want to be transparent – you can’t beat HoloLens’s performance for AR glasses. However, the tech is not perfect. When you place a hologram, in this case, our 3D model, there will still be some small amount of “drift.” This is where the hologram will move ever so slightly from where you placed it when you move around. Because of this, you can’t currently guarantee accuracy in the neighborhood ¼” or better. The backslats will be visible from behind when the furniture is complete. I don’t want the piece to look mangled and super amateurish, so I used a tape measure to ensure a clean look.
Don’t sigh in disappointment, though. For the bottom slats, I absolutely will be using just AR. I figure, if they turn out like my teeth before braces, they will be covered with the seat cushions anyhow, and it’ll be our little secret 😉
Taking the completed backing section and aligning it with my measurement, I clamp it into place. Now, I use AR to quality check my work. The backing is slanted, and through my glasses, I see I have it angled precisely to plan.
Fastening the back section in place is made simple using another benefit of AR: X-ray vision. I can see exactly where I need to drill into the side support to ensure I hit the center of the backing support. Without AR, I would’ve needed to do another calculation or eyeball it. Both of which introduces an opportunity for error.
Second to last step, I add on the cleats that will support the bottom slats. I pleasantly discover yet another cool trick with AR. I know where my slats are going to be placed in the next step. I can avoid drilling any screws into the cleats now that will conflict with screws in the slats later. Beautiful!
Okay, as promised earlier, time to truly put AR to the test. I am going to position each bottom slat using only what I see in my glasses. Much of this project has relied on knowing where Part A connects to Part B. We haven’t used AR to replace the tape measure…until right now.
Frankly, this is the holy grail of AR for many uses. Replacing any and all instruments, tools, and processes that require fine measurements will be truly transformative. We are a long way from achieving that level of precision consistently, but the journey there has already begun.
With that preamble out of my system, time to do work. In my glasses, I see where each slat belongs. I go down the row and place each strip of wood accordingly. I take a second pass, this time holding down the slats while driving a screw into them.
(Heads up, the following GIFs are pretty motion intense.)
Stepping back and turning off the 3D model, I see just how damn nice the slats came out. The entire outdoor sofa came out much better than I had anticipated.
---
I’ve spent countless hours over the last six or seven years working with AR glasses, and yet there are days where I’m still blown away and completely surprised. Those moments never get old.
Frankly, those moments, and all the moments that went into this project are a stark reminder of just how fascinating and awe inspiring augmented reality is. AR takes what we can do and supercharges those talents and abilities. AR takes what we can’t do, and provides us with new, and sometimes wildly imaginative ways to get stuff done.
Using AR, I was able to skip many brain draining steps doing it the traditional way would have induced. I learned how and where I can further leverage AR in future projects. Oh, I also got an awesome piece of furniture out of the experiment. Not a bad deal.
Beyond assembling a DIY piece of furniture, there are many ways this type of AR assistance can be applied in the near future.
The obvious one – building Ikea furniture at home free from the judgment of the cartoon builder.
Building buildings with this type of AR is not only possible, but is already happening by construction companies like McKinstry, AECOM, MacDonald-Miller using software solutions like Spectar.
A more exotic example – crowdsourced lego designs being uploaded for others to build a piece-by-piece perfect replica with guidance from AR. This brings the social aspect and collaborative aspect of Minecraft to the physical world.
The sky’s the limit. As cost, size, and comfort of glasses significantly improve, more uses will surface. In time, AR will become a mainstay in our everyday lives.
I hope I’ve adequately inspired, educated, or entertained you. If anything about this project piqued your interest, reach out. I know you have ideas and thoughts and I’d love to hear more about them, or build them with you!
Cheers,
Anthony
In the years to come, AR glasses will have a profound effect on how we work, play, and get things done. Let’s not talk hypotheticals. Let’s craft the vision, roll up our sleeves, and build that reality!