News – Page 18

seminar: Design in the Age of Metaverse and Extended Reality

May 1, 2022/in News, Teaching, XR-Lab /by Ming Tang

ARCH 7036-004 / ARCH5051.Elective Arch Theory Seminar. Spring semester. DAAP, UC.

Design in the Age of Metaverse and Extended Reality

Instructor: Ming Tang. Director, Extended Reality Lab. XR-Lab, Associate Professor, SAID, DAAP, University of Cincinnati

This seminar course focuses on the intersection of architecture design, and interior design with immersive visualization technologies, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Digital Twin, social VR, and real-time simulation. The class will explore the new spatial experience in the virtual realm and analyze human perceptions through hand-tracking, body-tracking, haptic simulation, and various sensory inputs. Students will learn both the theoretical framework and hands-on skills on XR development. The course will provide students exposure to the Oculus Quest, Teslasuit, Hololens technologies, and wearable sensors. Students are encouraged to propose their own or group research on the subject of future design with XR.

Hardware: Oculus Quest, and Hololens were provided by the course.

Student Research Project

Emma Banks. ShapesXR
Tyler Wilson. Hololens and Fologram
Roger Chanin From Twinmotion to Unreal
Nick Eartman. Adobe Aero for Augmented Reality
Kyle Beck. Second Life
Nick Chism.Wikitude for Augmented Reality
Peter Iskandar.Essay: Experiential Reality – Unveiling an Augmented Potential

Digital Twin

AR for community engagement. Price Hill

References:

Recommended podcast on Metaverse

Book Chapter

April 28, 2022/in News /by Ming Tang

Ming Tang wrote a section titled “Design and Development for Virtual Reality-based Driving Simulation” for Chapter 1 of the book Disruptive Emerging Transportation Technologies. Edited by Heng Wei, Yinhai Wang, and Jianming Ma. Published by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). 2022

Disruptive Emerging Transportation Technologies provides forward-looking overview of the relevant 4IR technologies and their potential impacts on the future disruptive emerging transportation. It is a valuable reference for relevant educators to re-imagine their roles, redesign their curricula, and adopt very different pedagogical strategies to address this inevitability, particularly when they are introducing emerging technologies into transportation planning and development, infrastructure design, and traffic management.

Topics include

•	4IR technologies impacting the future of transportation such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, edge computing, fog computing, cloud computing, fifth generation innovative communications technology, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT);
•	Surface transportation automation including connected vehicle (CV) and autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies, as well as other automation-based vehicles;
•	Testing methods and technologies for autonomous vehicles;
•	Emerging mobility services such as automated delivery and logistics, mobility as a service (MaaS), and mobility on demand (MOD);
•	Shared sustainable mobility such as shared bicycle services, shared vehicle services, and first mile/last mile solutions;
•	Cooperative and automated traffic control including self-organized intelligent adaptive control, eco-control and eco-ramp metering, and integrated ramp and corridor control; and
•	Major unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies and their possible impacts on the future of transportation.

NSF: Future of Work

April 23, 2022/in Mixed Reality, News, Research /by Ming Tang

Ming Tang worked as a co-investigator on the project funded by the NSF Grant.

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

Grant: #SES-2026594 PI: David W. Wendell. co-PIs: Harfmann, Anton; Fry, Michael; Rebola, Claudia; co-Is: Pravin Bhiwapurkar, Ann Black, Annulla Linders, Tamara Lorenz, Nabil Nassif, John Seibert, Ming Tang, Nicholas Williams, and Danny T.Y. Wu. 01-01-2021 -12-31-2021 National Science Foundation $149,720. Awarded Level: Federal

The primary goal of this proposed planning project is to assemble a diverse, multidisciplinary team of experts dedicated to devising a robust methodology for the collection, analysis, and correlation of existing discipline-specific studies and data. This endeavor focuses on buildings and their occupants, aiming to unearth previously undiscovered interactions. Our research will specifically delve into the intricate interrelationships between four key areas: 1) the overall performance of buildings, 2) the indoor and outdoor environmental conditions, 3) the physical health of the occupants, and 4) their satisfaction with the work environment. This comprehensive approach is designed to provide a holistic understanding of the dynamic between buildings and the well-being of the individuals within them.

Prof. Anton Harfmann developed the sensor towers.

Ming Tang spearheaded the development of a Digital Twin model, an innovative project integrating multiple historical sensor data sets into a comprehensive, interactive 3D model. This model encompasses several vital features: the capture, analysis, and visualization of historical data; cloud-based data distribution; seamless integration with Building Information Models (BIM); and an intuitive Web User Experience (UX). Building elements are extracted as metadata from the BIM model and then overlaid in screen-based and Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces, offering a multi-dimensional data view. Further details are available at the Cloud-based Digital Twin project for a more in-depth exploration of this work.