FW-HTF-P: Fostering Transferable Skills for Future-Ready Extraterrestrial Construction Workforce via an Intelligent-Immersive Training Environment

成为行星际物种的愿景要求建筑行业面临前所未有的挑战：地外建筑。我们设想未来建筑行业的前沿是外星建筑，工人的角色和他们所需的技能将会有很大的不同。对于未来的外星建筑行业，我们的跨学科研究团队感兴趣的是探索植根于数字化和人工智能的工业4.0新兴技术如何通过将可转移技能整合到培训环境中来实现面向未来的建筑劳动力。在这个项目中，指导原则是：(1)在未来地外劳动力发展的背景下更好地理解可转移技能的定义、层次和分类；(2)探索和推进通过适应新兴技术实现的培训环境，重点关注可转移技能，使现有工人为未来的前沿做好准备。我们的跨学科团队将研究这一愿景的技术和人文维度。该项目将调查和确定未来外星建筑的性质和未来工人所需的技能等级，以及可用于整合可转移技能以培养未来劳动力的新兴技术。此外，我们将设计、制作原型并评估一个智能沉浸式培训环境，使用人工智能辅助的、基于仿真的虚拟结构来培训现有工人的特定可转移技能，使他们为未来的前沿做好准备。特别是，项目团队将探索并原型化一个智能沉浸式培训环境，以满足培训工作专业人员的需求，以培养未来外星建筑工人的可转移技能。这项研究工作将在以下三个主要领域推进现有知识：(1)智能沉浸式培训环境在培养可转移技能（即计算思维、流畅推理和敏捷性）方面的有效性；(2)培训环境在提高未来外星建筑工人的知识获取、保留和表现方面的有效性；(3)基于人工智能的学习脚手架和个性化学习方法，以满足工作专业人员的特定需求。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The vision of becoming an interplanetary species requires the construction industry to face an unprecedented challenge: extraterrestrial construction. We envision the future frontier of the construction industry as extraterrestrial construction where the role of workers and their required skills will be significantly different. For the envisioned future extraterrestrial construction industry, our interdisciplinary research team is interested in exploring how Industry 4.0 emerging technologies rooted in digitalization and artificial intelligence can enable a future-ready construction workforce by integrating transferable skills into training environments. In this project, the guiding principles are (1) developing a better understanding of definition, hierarchy, and categorization of transferable skills in the context of future extraterrestrial workforce development, and (2) exploring and advancing training environments enabled by adapting emerging technologies and with a focus on transferable skills to make the existing workers become ready for the future frontier. Our interdisciplinary team will investigate the technological and human dimensions of this vision.This project will investigate and identify the nature of future extraterrestrial construction and the hierarchy of the skills required by future workers, as well as emerging technologies that can be utilized to integrate transferable skills for developing a future-ready workforce. In addition, we will design, prototype, and evaluate an intelligent-immersive training environment using AI-assisted, simulation-based virtual constructs on training the existing workers in specific transferable skills to make them ready for the future frontier. In particular, the project team will explore and prototype an intelligent-immersive training environment that addresses the needs for training working professionals to foster transferable skills of future extraterrestrial construction workers. The research effort will advance existing knowledge in the following three main areas: (1) the effectiveness of the intelligent-immersive training environment for fostering transferable skills, i.e., computational thinking, fluid reasoning, and agility, (2) the effectiveness of the training environment for improving knowledge acquisition, retention, and performance of future extraterrestrial construction workers and (3) an AI-based approach to learning scaffolding and personalized learning in order to address specific needs of working professionals.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.