The Spatial Hub team of students and researchers at the Mendel University Faculty of Business and Economics (PEF MENDELU) is working on a new device called the Spatial Design System. This new tool is intended to guarantee the accessibility of augmented reality to all. Once reserved for corporate purposes, virtual and augmented reality is now part of everyday life. The device under development at PEF MENDELU will function as a software library that will help developers create applications.
The Spatial Design System includes a collection of reusable components designed to simplify the development of 3D games and applications for virtual and augmented reality. These components range from buttons, menus, and dialog boxes to features like snapping virtual objects to real-world counterparts and allowing interactions with objects.
Unlike complex development tools, this new tool is designed to be accessible to everyone. Users only need basic knowledge of web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript, which are already taught in some elementary schools. “Applications created in this system can be run not only on various types of glasses for virtual and augmented reality, but also on regular computers and mobile devices, which allows development even without owning a special helmet,” said project leader Ivo Pisařovic from the PEF MENDELU Institute of Informatics. “In addition, the library is completely free, open-source, and a regular computer is sufficient to work with it – there is no need to invest in expensive graphics cards or other specialized hardware or software.”
Mastering complex tools like Unreal Engine or Unity can take years because “the biggest stumbling block lies in the complexity of these tools,” said Pisařovic. “Learning to use these tools takes a lot of time and it could be said that only after several years is a student able to develop effectively. We use these tools in the Spatial Hub laboratory for implementing applications as part of contract research in cooperation with companies and also in teaching specialized subjects in the Open Informatics program.”
As a result, researchers started exploring new methods for developing applications in virtual and augmented reality.
“We asked ourselves what is key to innovation and technology development? The answer is to make the technology cheap, accessible and at the same time create an environment that does not hinder experiments,” Pisařovic explained. “Examples of such successful technologies are Arduino in the world of robotics, Android in the world of smartphones or Edison’s light bulb. What all these examples have in common is that the creators were not the first to try to make a breakthrough in a given area, but they approached the problem differently – they opened the given area to the general public. In a situation where the majority of the population can purchase a given technology, demand increases massively, the technology becomes cheaper and, above all, the number of applications also grows rapidly.”
Standard glasses now often incorporate augmented reality features through integrated cameras, enabling seamless interaction between the virtual and real worlds.
Nowadays, virtual objects can dynamically respond to real-world events. Pisařovic explained some of the possibilities of using the new tool: “We are talking about so-called mixed reality. For example, in today’s applications, it is common for a virtual object to be attached to a table or wall in a room. It could be a game where the user jumps with a virtual character over real furniture in a room. In the case of corporate use, it could be graphs showing the production of machines that are displayed directly above real machines in the production hall.”
The system can already be used, but all planned components will be ready by the end of next year.
