The Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Design has developed a web application based on AI able to conceptualize hand-made drawings. The online tool, that can be used for free and without registration, is a 3D CAD that incorporates a special design assistant in charge of extracting 2D or 3D conceptual geometries from pictures or sketches provided by the user as input.
Although the tool is still experimental and can only understand projections of relatively simple polyhedrons, counts with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for reading the measures present in the sketch, and with an amazing function for imagining the faces hidden in the sketched projection. Beyond the AI design assistant, the online CAD application has not the performance of a desktop professional CAD due to it is executed within the web browser, but provides all design functions that can be expected in this kind of software. Additionally LAI4D offers other interesting and uncommon features like the possibility of defining sub-drawings or algorithmic entities programmable via JavaScript.
While most of technologies in the filed of artificial vision are based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) and deep learning, the research carried out by LAI4D has followed an unconventional path. Indeed the project only uses CNN for the OCR function. The design assistant is not limited to a predefined set of trained geometries but it can analyze generic polyhedrons because here there is no shape recognition but shape conceptualization. This innovative approach is the reason why the current release of the LAI4D designer performs all the interpretation process on the client machine not needing the help of remote powerful servers to execute a heavy CNN.
This software, despite its early stage of development, is another demonstration of how artificial intelligence is going to change the way humans work. In the future, sophisticated applications like engineering tools, nowadays intended only for expert designers, will be accessible to any person thanks to the availability of powerful smart assistants. These virtual companions will be able to understand what the user wants exploiting cognitive algorithms that enable an almost natural human-machine communication.
For more information, visit LAI4D website.
