CAREER: Interactive Process Visualization in Virtual and Augmented Reality for Innovative Learning, Analysis, and Design of Field Construction Operations

职业生涯：虚拟和增强现实中的交互式过程可视化，用于现场施工作业的创新学习、分析和设计本项目的目标是将强大的作业可视化能力带到所有建筑从业者、研究人员、教育工作者和学生的触手可及、能力和培训范围内。该项目涉及基础研究、适当工具的设计和教育材料的开发，以实现沉浸式虚拟现实(VR)和室外增强现实(AR)环境中施工操作的准确3D动画。这项研究解决了知识的基本限制，包括研究描述动态演变地形的自动化方法，定义准确的资源运动路径的技术，描述铰接式资源的准确物理行为的方法，以及使流体建筑材料具有动画效果的方法。研究还探索了在真实工地上准确覆盖(增强)操作的图形图像的方法，在AR中进行直观和安全的用户-计算机交互的技术，以及在AR中使操作动画具有高度适应性和移动性的方法。教育目标与研究错综复杂地联系在一起，并依赖于研究，包括设计基于虚拟现实的教育模块，为教育工作者和研究人员举办讲习班，课程开发和改进，为K-12学生提供基于AR的教材，重新培养和留住最聪明的女性和少数族裔工程师的战略，以及努力发展PI作为教师和教育工作者的个人技能。该项目旨在显著改进离散事件仿真模型的验证、确认和通信，从而促进其在作战规划和决策中的使用。外地业务的业绩预计也会有所改善，因为在执行之前，可以适当沟通计划的工作。除了交流未来可能发生的事情(通过模拟)，还可以重新创建过去发生的事情(根据记录)和当前正在发生的事情(通过实时数据)。该项目旨在改进现场施工作业的规划、分析和设计。这可以节省大量的成本和时间，提高行业竞争力，并降低民用基础设施和其他已建设施的生命周期成本。预计对价值8990亿美元的美国建筑业的累积影响将是巨大的。在制造业、运输业、采矿业和造船业等运营可视化与建筑业同样重要的领域，也会产生这样的好处。该项目预计将对教育产生重大影响，因为它将促进建筑学校课程的创新，并催生一个建筑工程和管理专业领域。该项目产生的工具和教育材料预计将增强建筑课程，并将向其他机构的教育工作者公开提供。该项目对知识的贡献影响了未来的研究，使研究人员能够将主要精力花在研究和解决操作、安全和教育问题上，而不是花更少的精力来创作动画。一些研究生和本科生也参与了这个项目。PI一直在积极努力，通过与女性工程师协会、少数族裔工程方案办公室和密歇根大学本科生研究办公室方案合作，在该项目中招募和留住女性和少数族裔工程师。总而言之，该项目的社会效益是：1)通过适当的建筑作业规划和设计，可以降低建筑生命周期成本；2)对未来的建筑工程师进行有效的教育和培训；以及3)参与该项目的人员的职业发展。

CAREER: Interactive Process Visualization in Virtual and Augmented Reality for Innovative Learning, Analysis, and Design of Field Construction Operations The objective of this project is to bring powerful operations visualization capabilities within the reach, ability, and training of all construction practitioners, researchers, educators, and students. The project in-volves basic research, design of appropriate tools, and development of educational materials to enable accurate 3D animation of construction operations in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) and outdoor Aug-mented Reality (AR) environments. The research addresses fundamental limitations in knowledge, and includes the investigation of automated methods to describe dynamic evolving terrain, techniques to de-fine accurate resource motion paths, methods to portray accurate physical behavior of articulated re-sources, and approaches to animate fluid construction materials. The research also explores methods to accurately overlay (augment) graphical images of operations over real jobsites, techniques for intuitive and safe user-computer interaction in AR, and approaches to make operations animation in AR highly adaptable and mobile. The educational objectives are intricately related to and dependent on the research, and include the design of VR-based educational modules, workshops for educators and researchers, cur-riculum development and improvement, AR-based teaching material for K-12 students, strategies to re-cruit and retain the brightest women and minority engineers, and efforts to develop the PI's personal skills as a teacher and educator. This project aims to significantly improve the verification, validation, and communication of discrete-event simulation models, thus facilitating their use in operations planning and decision-making. Performance of field operations is also expected to improve by allowing proper com-munication of planned work prior to execution. In addition to communicating what may happen in the future (from simulation), it will be possible to re-create what happened in the past (from records), and what is currently happening (from real-time data).This project aims to enable improved planning, analysis, and design of field construction operations. This can result in substantial cost and time savings, improvement in industry competitiveness, and reduction in life cycle costs of civil infrastructure and other constructed facilities. The cumulative impact across the $899 billion U.S. construction industry is expected to be significant. Such benefits also accrue in fields such as manufacturing, transportation, mining, and ship-building where operations visualization is as vital as in construction. The project is expected to significantly impact education by fostering innova-tion in curriculum at construction schools, and spawning an area of specialization in Construction Engi-neering and Management. The tools and educational materials resulting from the project are expected to enhance the construction curriculum, and are being made publicly available to educators at other institu-tions. The project's contributions to knowledge impact future research by allowing researchers to spend major efforts on studying and addressing operations, safety, and educational issues, and less effort on cre-ating animations. Several Graduate and Undergraduate students are also involved in the project. The PI has been proactively working to recruit and retain women and minority engineers in the project by work-ing with the Society of Women Engineers, the Minority Engineering Program Office, and the Under-graduate Research Office Program at the University of Michigan. In summary, the societal benefits of the project are: 1) the reductions in construction life-cycle costs that can be possible through proper planning and design of construction operations; 2) the effective education and training of future construction engi-neers; and 3) the career development of the personnel participating in the project.