Posts

Digital Twin of Cincinnati

A realtime flythrough demo for Digital Twin of City Cincinnati

Digital Futures Building at the University of Cincinnati

Destroy Alien buildings near the UC campus. Project developed by students Cooper Pflaum and Nishanth Chidambaram. 

Digital Twin, LLM & IIOT

IIOT for legacy and intelligent factory machines with XR and LLM feedback with a Digital Twin demonstration of real-time IOT for architecture/building applications using Omniverse.

  • PIs: Sam AnandMing Tang

$40,000. UC Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute Consortium Research Project: 01.2024-01.2025

The project centers on the development of a Digital Twin (DT) and a multi-agent Large Language Model (LLM) framework designed to access and interpret real-time and historical data through an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform. Real-time data is sourced from legacy machines and smart machines, integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) with environmental sensors. The multi-agent LLM framework comprises specialized agents and supports diverse user interfaces, including screen-based systems, Virtual Reality (VR) environments, and mobile devices, enabling versatile interaction, data visualization, and analysis.

The research evaluates leading DT platforms—Autodesk Tandem, NVIDIA Omniverse, and Unreal Engine—focusing on their capabilities to integrate IoT and BIM data while supporting legacy machine systems.  Autodesk Tandem excelled in seamlessly combining BIM metadata with real-time IoT streams for building operations and system scalability.  NVIDIA Omniverse demonstrated unmatched rendering fidelity and collaborative features through its Universal Scene Description (USD) framework. Unreal Engine, notable for its immersive visualization, proved superior for LLM integration, leveraging 3D avatars and conversational AI to enhance user interaction.

Read more

Cloud-based Digital Twin

Clients are one click away from interacting with a Digital Twin model on their personal devices. No installation is required.

The XR-Lab’s project showcases a cloud-based Digital Twin (DT) model, designed for accessibility and interaction via mobile devices. This advanced DT model allows multiple users to engage with its complex features directly through touch screens, eliminating the need for app installations. Clients can effortlessly access the content using a simple URL in a web browser on their personal iOS or Android mobile devices and tablets. The project is distinguished by its photorealistic renderings, which are streamed to clients at high frame rates, ensuring a visually rich and seamless experience. Furthermore, our DT model is an integration of various cutting-edge technologies, including Building Information Modeling (BIM), Metadata, IoT sensor data, 360-degree images/videos, and web3D content, creating a comprehensive and interactive digital environment.

 

More information on Future of Work: Understanding the interrelationships between humans and technology to improve the quality of work-life in smart buildings.

Industry 4.0/5.0 grant

 

Immersive vs. Traditional Training​ – a comparison of training modalities​

PIs: Tamara Lorenz, Ming Tang

  • Dr. Tamara Lorenz. Associate Professor. Embodied Interactive Systems Lab, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 Institute (I45I), Center for Cognition, Action, and Perception (CAP)
  • Ming Tang. Professor. Extended Reality Lab, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 Institute (I45I), Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS)

Consortium Research Project: evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive training protocol against different traditional training modalities. 

Grant. $40,000. By UC Industry 4.0/5.0 Institute 01.2023-01.2024

Open Questions

  • Is immersive training equally as effective or better than traditional training? 
  • Is immersive training beneficial for specific types of training (skill, behavior), while other modalities are better for other types (e.g. knowledge acquisition)?
  • Does the benefit of immersive VR training warrant the initial investment in equipment and subsequent investment in project building, running, and sustenance?

Proposal

  • Evaluation of the effectiveness of an immersive training protocol against different traditional training modalities. 
  • Evaluation of modality-dependent benefits for different learning goals. 
  • Derivation of assessment metrics for VR training against other training modalities. 

Training scenario: DAAP Fire Evacuation

traditional training with slides and maps.

VR training with an immersive and interactive experience.

 

 

Thanks to the Institute’s Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) and industry patrons, including Siemens, Kinetic Vision, John Deere, Stress Engineering Services, Innovative Numberics, and Ethicon. 

Next Phase experiments

Multi-player test



 

Links

 2017 Virtual DAAP Fire Evacuation project.

 

At UC News

New UC institute looks ahead to ‘Industry 5.0’. UC will harness collective talent across campus to help companies solve new challenges. by Michael Miller.  December 8, 2022