Lego^®-like Bricks to Go from the Real to the Virtual World

Abstract

In this work, we prototype a system that allows for Lego^®-like bricks to be used physically to create a model in the real world that is then mapped and recreated in an existing Lego CAD software. This allows users to build their designs tactically in the real world and have these designs translated into the virtual-world automatically. The key benefit is that bricks are, naturally, a tactile building tool, but there is a desire to have virtual representations of brick-based models for all sorts of reasons such as designing and creating instruction booklets, creating models that can be incorporated in virtual worlds (such as games), and simply sharing and archiving a design beyond the limits of a physical model. Our system shows that an embedded system that includes per brick computing intelligence is a viable method to achieve the simple goal of translating a real brick model into a virtual model.