Collaborative teaching to study the social impact of A.I, Automation, and Robots

Funded by UC Forward Course Development grant. The Future of (no) Work and Artificial Intelligence.

(Award fund rescind due to COV-19 budget freeze). 2020

Amount: $15,000.  The courses will be offered in the Fall semester. 2020.

  • Ming Tang, Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Interior Design, DAAP
  • Cory Haberman, Assistant Professor and Director of the Institute of Crime Science, CECH
  • Tamara Lorenz, Assistant Professor, Psychology-Mechanical Engineering-Electrical Engineering (jointly appointed). Department of Psychology. College of A&S.

Self-portrait drawing. designed by Google Machine Learning named “DeepDream”. Painted by Kuka Robot. By Ming Tang. 2018

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An interdisciplinary approach to using eye-tracking technology for design and behavioral analysis

Eye-tracking Tobii workshop offered at CGC, DAAP, UC. 2019.

Eye-tracking devices measure eye position and eye movement, allowing documentation of how environmental elements draw the attention of viewers. In recent years, there have been a number of significant breakthroughs in eye-tracking technology, with a focus on new hardware and software applications. Wearable eye-tracking glasses together with advances in video capture and virtual reality (VR) provide advanced tracking capability at greatly reduced prices.  Given these advances, eye trackers are becoming important research tools in the fields of visual systems, design, psychology, wayfinding, cognitive science, and marketing, among others. Currently, eye-tracking technologies are not readily available at UC, perhaps because of a lack of familiarity with this new technology and how can be used for teaching and research, or the perception of a steep learning curve for its application.

It has become clear to our UC faculty team that research and teaching will significantly benefit from utilizing these cutting-edge tools. It is also clear that a collective approach to acquiring the eye-tracking hardware and software, and training faculty on its application will ultimately result in greater faculty collaboration with its consequent benefits of interdisciplinary research and teaching.

The primary goals of the proposed project are to provide new tools for research and teaching that benefit from cutting-edge eye-tracking technologies involving interdisciplinary groups of UC faculty and students. The project will enhance the knowledge base among faculty and allow new perspectives on how to integrate eye-tracking technology. It will promote interdisciplinarity the broader UC communities.

Grant:

  • “Eye-tracking technology”. Provost Group / Interdisciplinary Award. $19,940. PI: Tang. Co-PI: Auffrey, Hildebrandt. UC. Faculty team: Adam Kiefer,  Michael A. Riley, Julian Wang, Jiaqi Ma, Juan Antonio Islas Munoz, Joori Suh. 2018
  • DAAP matching garnt  $ 11,000.

Hardware: Tobii Pro Glasses, Tobii Pro VR

Software: Tobii Pro Lab, Tobii VR analysis

Test with Tobii Pro Glasses

Hybrid Construction

A hybrid construction using Hololens AR model overlay with the physical structure. The second half of the video is captured through MS Hololens. However, due to the low visibility of the holographic image under sunlight, we are not able to use the AR model to guide installation. Research to be continued….

Installation. SAID, DAAP, University of Cincinnati
Base structure by 1st year SAID, students.
Add-on structure + Augmented Reality by ARCH3014 students.

GA: Robert Peebles, Lauren Meister, Damario Walker-Brown, Jordan Sauer, DanielAnderi. Faculty: Ming Tang

Video captured by 360 camera, MS Hololens, Fologram. Check out full installation image here.

 

UIA-CBC Design Build Competition

Pear Orchard Cabins

Design + Build project in China. UIA-CBC Competition

2019 UIA-CBC International Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop walks into Guoyuan Village, Aiyuan Town, Siyang County, Suqian City, Jiangsu. UC + Beijing Jiaotong University (BJTU) team has won the UIA-CBC competition proposal as one of the top 15 teams from proposals submitted by 101 Universities across 23 nations. After the winning of Phase 1 proposal, UC+BJTU team was invited to join the Phase 2, and build the permanent structures from August.01 to 19 in China. The project won the third prize. Please check out the final result of all 15 projects .

Taking the century-old pear orchard as the site, this year’s Competitive Construction Workshop sets a theme of creating “Pear Orchard Cabins” that can improve the quality of living in the orchard. The participating teams designed and build 15 cabins in the orchard as well as infrastructure that connected the whole community in order to contribute to the revitalization of the “Century-old Pear Orchard”, and also to explore a path for changing villages by the power of design.

The theme of this year’s workshop is “Pear Orchard Cabins”, which takes the whole 100-year-old orchard as the site of design where 15 selected teams from renowned international and domestic universities will be involved to discuss how to “activate villages through design”. The teams will use a limited space to design and construct their cabin in order to provide more activity solutions to the villagers and visitors. The design will be based on the element of “pear” and picture future scenarios involving countryside spatial experience and pear-related themes all the way from design to constructions or construction. The design content is not limited to installations and may also include consideration of the site and the environment.

As an integral part of village revitalization plan, the workshop seeks to explore a rural public architectural form than can fit in with nature. By linking up the 15 “Pear Orchard Cabins” in the century-old orchard with a continuous infrastructure, it emphasizes the fun experience of exploring the place, activates the heart of the village and injects the power of design into the basic mode of rural production, driving the change and improvement of rural lifestyle and providing a paradigm for rural construction.

Phase II: Design+Build Team

Students: Lauren Figley, Jordan Micham, Pat McQuillen, Vu Tran, Jeremy Swafford,Tess Ryan

Faculty supervisor:  Whitney Hamaker, Ming Tang (UC); Yingdong Hu, Yunan Zhang, Yongquan Chen (BJTU)

 

Phase I: Design Proposal

UC Student Team, class from ARCH3014, digital media skills. Spring 2019, taught by Prof. Ming Tang.

Winning Team: Lauren Figley, Andi Moore, Jordan Micham, Pat McQuillen, Vu Tran 

Graduate assistant: Jeremy Swafford, Shreya Jasrapuria, Kenna Gibson, Alan Bossman, Tess Ryan

Faculty advisor: Ming Tang, Xiangbin Xu, Yuhui Song (UC); Yingdong Hu, Yongquan Chen ( BJTU)

early concept

Final concept

Photo of Phase II. China

 

Uptown Cincinnati Urban Mobility Studio

Studio Brief

Following the sucess of Fall 2018 Urban Mobility studio, using Cincinnati Uptown and proposed Smart Corridor area as the focus area, the Spring 2019 studio presents a study investigating the urban mobility with an emphasis on the simulated human behavior cues and movement information as input parameters. The research is defined as a hybrid method which seeks logical architecture/urban forms and analyzes its’ performance. As one of the seven-courses-clusters supported by UC Forward, the studio project extends urban mobility study by exploring, collecting, analyzing, and visualizing spatial information and generate computational forms through various Virtual Reality, and eye-tracking, and stress analysis technologies.

The course project was presented at the Uptown Innovation Transportation Corridor Forum 04.31.2019, which showcased students’ smart transportation projects from courses in transportation engineering, urban planning and architecture. Please check out the Uptown Corridor: storymap webpage for other courses outcome at UC.

SAID faculty: Ming Tang. NCARB, RA, LEED AP.

SAID Students: Alan Bossman, Shreya Jasrapuria, Grant Koniski, Jianna Lee, Josiah Ebert, Taylour Upton, Kevin Xu, Yining Fang, Ganesh Raman, Nicole Szparagowski. TA: Niloufar Kioumarsi

Faculty team: DAAP SOP: Na Chen, Xinhao Wang; DAAP SAID: Ming Tang; CEAS Civil Engineering: Heng Wei, Jiaqi Ma;  download Final report. 113 page. PDF.

Selected student projects

Final report of SAID student projects (PDF. 5MB) . Check more rendering images here at course library.

Example of VR Walkthrough (windows OS)

Designed by Tylour Upton. MARCH. SAID, DAAP, UC. download the real time walkthrough here. 2GB zip file

unzip files, double click the exe file to run it under windows OS.

Walkthrough Instruction:

  • navigation.  A, S, W, D
  • Fly: F( turn on/off)
  • Fly up: Q
  • Fly down: Z
  • First person camera control: C ( turn on/off)
  • Jump: space bar
  • Get on/off a truck: E
  • Drive truck: A, S, W, D
  • Turn on truck light: L