Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk posted this double whammy of cryptic messages to his Twitter account on August 23rd:
@elonmusk: We figured out how to design rocket parts just w hand movements through the air (seriously). Now need a high frame rate holograph generator.
@elonmusk: Will post video next week of designing a rocket part with hand gestures & then immediately printing it in titanium
As there are no further details, and the video is now slightly delayed (per Twitter as of September 2nd: @elonmusk: Video was done last week, but needs more work. Aiming to publish link in 3 to 4 days.), it’s time to speculate! I was hoping to have seen the video by now, but oh well. Deadline is deadline.
First of all: what’s he talking about? My best guess is a free-hand, direct-manipulation, 6-DOF user interface for a 3D computer-aided design (CAD) program. In other words, something roughly like this (just take away the hand-held devices and substitute NURBS surfaces and rocket parts for atoms and molecules, but leave the interaction method and everything else the same):
