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Ecmweb 15656 Augmented Reality Pr 1
Ecmweb 15656 Augmented Reality Pr 1
Ecmweb 15656 Augmented Reality Pr 1
Ecmweb 15656 Augmented Reality Pr 1
Ecmweb 15656 Augmented Reality Pr 1

A New Vision for Building

Aug. 24, 2017
Powerful technology honed in the computer gaming world is coming to design and construction. How augmented reality tools are poised to put data and manipulable 3D images in the view of builders.

Reality is constantly changing, and few grasp that better than those involved in construction — where what’s here today will, by design, look very different tomorrow. Designers and builders navigate that typically chaotic change process as competently as possible. But it’s the rare project that comes together seamlessly — on time, on budget, and exactly as envisioned. Structures rise, but only through a seemingly constant process of overcoming obstacles. But what if those barriers could be lowered, if design and construction could be streamlined to the point where costly glitches that often arise from miscommunication are the exception and not the rule? In a broader sense, what if the reality that those involved in the building process resignedly accept could be altered?

As it turns out, bets are being placed in both Silicon Valley and the construction industry that such change is within reach. The wager is on the high-tech process of digitally lifting detailed and comprehensive project designs off the page and vividly into the view of personnel working on or with a real-time view of an actual job site. The end result is what’s come to be known as augmented reality (AR), an offshoot of better-known virtual reality (VR) technology that itself is moving beyond gaming and into practical applications — construction included.

In a construction application, AR is shorthand for a state in which “reality” defined as an existing condition is enhanced. It’s supplemented with a specialized software-powered device view of either the future in the form of an overlain or holographically rendered master project design, or with detailed information about what’s being seen and experienced in real time.

With AR in play, reality changes on two levels: what architects, construction managers, laborers, and others involved in a project see with their own eyes, and what the design and construction industry wrestles with regularly. The result is a reality transformed by additional, better, and timely information that can yield improved processes and outcomes.

Early stages

Despite recent advancements, AR remains a work in progress. While enthusiastically embraced by a handful of visionary builders, designers, and construction managers working closely with technology developers, it is being deployed in only a tiny fraction of projects — and then often in a test bed scenario. Early indications, however, are that the concept is solid, that the technology works, and that AR has ready applications in a design and construction sector lagging in technology-aided process improvements. And while AR’s early testers are firms involved in the upper tiers of project management and design, benefits could filter down to other parties over time. That includes other mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems designers and subcontractors, who may also be drawn into using it.

Interest in AR is being fueled by the growing availability and functionality of the enabling hardware — gear worn on the head that furnishes the digital data and imagery to the eyes via a display as the physical space is traversed. The growing commercial availability of Microsoft’s HoloLens, an early entrant, along with the appearance of startups like Los Angeles-based Daqri and its Smart Helmet, is putting AR within reach of more users and developers eyeing a variety of real-world applications. Both companies, though, have construction-related uses in their crosshairs because the technology looks so readily adaptable to the everyday, practical needs of builders and designers.

AR, it’s thought, might find itself especially at home in an industry that continues to develop and refine design and modeling software. If those tools can be successfully melded with AR, that would provide the nascent AR industry with a strong use-case launching pad. Some who could end up being among the early adopters of AR in the construction and design world see solid prospects for such a scenario unfolding.

Late last year, the manager of virtual design and construction at Parsons Electric, a Minneapolis-based electrical contracting company, sampled AR in a trial arranged by Daqri on a new hospital construction job. On site with executives from the general contractor, Mortenson Construction, also of Minneapolis, Bryan Bornetun joined other invitees in donning a Smart Helmet and viewing 3D-modeled blueprints of MEP components slated to be installed in the roughed-in space in which they were gathered. The experience, rendered via Autodesk’s BIM360 Integration software running on the Smart Helmet’s processor, impressed Bornetun in its detail, scale, and navigability.

“It’s amazing,” he says, “you put the helmet on, and you see the construction site but also where stuff is supposed to go in the future. I was leery at first about how it would all blend together, but you do get a clear vision of what will be built at any phase of the project. You have both worlds in one.”

That seamless merger of the real and the virtual, Bornetun says, may give AR the edge long-term over other advanced design tools used in the field. Detailed project models can be accessed in the field on tablets with tools like BIM360 and Revit, for instance, but they don’t come close to the context and immersion that AR seems to offer, he notes. The hands-free aspect is a potential plus for users walking a construction site, as is the ability to know exactly where you are at all times.

“Since the helmet is GPS-based, it’s able to track where you move through the structure as it relates to the model,” he says. “Using an iPad, you can see the model, but you don’t get the real-life background that Daqri provides.”

A natural fit

The AR experience may amount to something far more than “cool”; it may be a perfect fit for how humans are built. Scott Aldridge, innovation and disruptive technologies leader for CDM Smith, a Boston-based engineering and construction services firm, has been spearheading the firm’s push into the realms of extended or mixed reality — terms he prefers because they better describe what’s being sought: a melding of the virtual and the real worlds that can spawn deeper learning and engagement. The end result could be an improvement on how complex designs are formulated, perceived, and understood.

“The human brain has developed to be spatially oriented, and you perceive things faster, understand them quicker, and make better decisions in that state,” he says. “I’ve researched this and learned that 70% of our sensory receptors are in our eyes, and 50% of the brain is involved in visual processing. So we’re visual creatures.”

Aldridge’s quest to leverage this emerging technology has led him to embrace Microsoft’s HoloLens. After securing two developer editions in 2015, he acquired a dozen enterprise editions, and has been working to selectively integrate their use into elements of firm projects.

He’s drawn to the Microsoft product because it takes the AR experience up a notch by presenting design components as 3D holograms. In that way, HoloLens is more a mixed reality device that is able to present a richer experience by incorporating elements present in more deeply immersive VR experiences that fully sequester the real world.

“Augmented reality is more about overlaying two-dimensional features onto reality, where in mixed reality users can better interact with both the three-dimensional virtual content of the digital world while maintaining a presence in the physical world,” he says.

The comparative features and qualities of reality enhancement products may differ and ultimately matter, especially as competitors jockey for position. Of greater importance, though, is that AR and related technologies are attracting interest for their potential to impact the bottom line by improving collaboration, boosting efficiency, and heading off errors.

PCL Construction Services, Inc., a Denver-based construction manager and general contractor, has utilized HoloLens to navigate a complex project at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The company is building a new baggage handling system there, a job that requires optimizing and improving the existing system while keeping it operational. Crews laser scanned much of the system to gauge how new pre-fabricated components would fit, but encountered some areas where that technique proved difficult, says Matt Glassman, PCL’s virtual construction manager. So the company turned to HoloLens, pushing 3D models of new electrical and mechanical components to the device, enabling designers to move through the area with a better view of the challenge.

“We’re able to project a hologram of the design into reality, see what things will look like in the space and identify potential conflicts so they can be managed before construction begins,” Glassman says.

PCL is in the early stages of evaluating AR and the HoloLens, Glassman says, and envisions using it, for now, mostly as a tool to improve workflow and shop-level coordination on projects. HoloLens has proved especially useful in helping job superintendents and engineers better envision how to sequence and break up concrete pours, and, in some cases, replaced the need to produce a costly succession of 3D prints.

“AR, for us, is still mostly experimental, and I don’t think it’s necessarily there yet,” Glassman says. “HoloLens has some limitations on accuracy and how well it tracks as you move around. But it seems to be the first hardware generation that offers some level of productivity.”

In early July, CDM Smith had four projects underway in which HoloLens was being employed in different phases of design and construction. The company landed one of them, Aldridge says, primarily because the client saw the firm as an innovator in the use of mixed reality technology.

“It’s becoming recognized as another tool to help us design and build faster, safer, and cheaper, and we’re bringing clients and other parties along with us on the journey,” he says.

Early warning tool

One reason AR is attractive is its ability to head off potential problems. Electrical components offer a good example, says Dave Tucker, CDM Smith’s  technical strategy leader for electrical engineering, because they’re intermixed with other mechanical components and incorporate extensive and complex conduit runs.

“Routing conduit and wires from electrical equipment is where we often see opportunities to use HoloLens to address conflicts, especially before construction,” Tucker says.

Additionally, HoloLens’s interactivity features, which allow users to not only view, but also experiment with changing and revising designs, offer another powerful layer of design process control. Beth Charis-Molling, a CDM Smith electrical engineer also experienced in working with VR tools, says the interactivity component enhances the “clash detection” value of AR and gives designers a better project-level perspective.

“With 3D, we can draw different conduit runs and see what actually works, whereas with 2D we say ‘connect this to this panelboard,’” she says. “You can get a design that more closely resembles what’s actually done in the field.”

While AR is seen as a design tool, it could also help better ensure that construction is tracking design. The prospect of giving construction managers access to AR as they work on a job site and conduct field inspections intrigues Tim Reamer, director of electrical engineering with Harley Ellis Devereaux, a Southfield, Mich., architecture and engineering firm.

“Instead of fumbling through drawings, builders could have good visibility of the model and validate whether it’s being constructed as designed,” he says. “We give contractors leeway in the field to install for fit and constructability, and AR could make that easier to navigate.”

Reamer says his firm is observing developments with AR closely, aware of its potential but watchful to see if it proves a good fit for construction industry applications.

“We’re at the mercy of the folks who make these tools,” he says. “We’ve been using scanned data points to generate existing conditions on sites, and you could say that’s a form of augmented reality. The data that we’d need to do this is there, but we’d need tools generated for us in our industry.”

Among the long-term challenges in adapting AR to construction is ensuring that the experience truly adds value and is both safe and fruitful for users.

Incorporating elements of VR into AR introduces potential problems related to the user’s comfort level, says Lucas Richmond, senior manager in the media studio of Gilbane Building Co., a Milwaukee construction management firm that has grown to be a big user of VR to develop project mock-ups. A perennial challenge with VR is delivering a proper image “frame rate” that won’t make a user experience motion sickness-like symptoms. Neutralizing that would be especially critical for applications where users are walking a construction site.

“BIM models aren’t optimized at all for use in these types of devices, and if you were to take Revit and just drop it into a game engine you’d get sick,” Richmond says. “But those models can be optimized with production software like Maya or 3ds Max.”

However, opportunities also exist for making AR more than just sufficient for use in the building world. Advances also may be coming in expanding AR’s native capabilities. If AR catches on, Tucker envisions a scenario where specialized design software is customized for that application.

“We’ve seen software we use in the electrical design, such as power system analysis and lighting design software, merge into the Revit environment, and it may be just a matter of time before they merge into the mixed reality environment, where engineers can use software they’re accustomed to working with,” he says. “I think software will have to be developed that works in that environment just like software has been created for use in tablets, iPhones, and mobile technology.”         

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lees Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

SIDEBAR: Augmented Reality in a Maintenance Role

As one of the most time-consuming and costly elements of managing a structure or operation, the labor-intensive maintenance and repair function is ripe for technological innovation. A new approach might lie in the deployment of augmented reality (AR), the same technology that’s drawing attention for the positive change it might bring to the job of creating, building, and installing all those things that eventually demand attention.

Detailed 3D visuals and data about electrical or mechanical gear in a building, say, delivered via hands-free AR headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens, could provide the information personnel need to perform maintenance, and potentially replace guesswork, clunky equipment manuals, or time-consuming communications back-and-forth. AR could also be configured to gather via sensors real-time equipment status and display the pertinent data. The end result would speedier, more reliable maintenance work.

“You could put the HoloLens on and recognize a pump, say, and click on a menu that would pull up operational and maintenance information and tell you which electrical panel or breaker it’s tied to,” says Matt Glassman, virtual construction manager for PCL Construction Services, a Seattle-based construction services firm. “This isn’t being done in a practical way yet, but it’s another capacity that would allow you to connect all kinds of information to reality, including live data feeds from building information systems or electrical usage information from a meter.”

With key information at their fingertips, or more accurately eyes, Glassman says, personnel could be more productive in roles that often entail a high degree of costly trial and error.

AR gurus at another construction services firm, CDM Smith, concur that the technology could be a game changer for facilities management. Dave Tucker, technical strategy leader for electrical engineering, sees AR as a potential solution for the attrition taking place in inspection and maintenance ranks.

“We’re finding that there’s a depth of knowledge continuing to retire in many industries, and many jobs are not being filled,” he says. “AR could augment that new leaner workforce by providing information and knowledge that’s being lost.”

While it’s still early in such applications, AR is finding its way into operational environments. A year ago, Microsoft released information about Japan Air Lines testing HoloLens as an aide to mechanics engaged in fleet maintenance. The airline reportedly was interested in seeing how far detailed data and 3D holographs of aircraft engines and other parts viewed through the HoloLens could go in helping workers complete maintenance work.

Another company, Mitsubishi Electric, was reportedly experimenting with using AR in both manufacturing and maintenance-support roles — and for inspection work in water treatment plants and building electrical systems. AR may also be well-positioned to leverage continued advances in sophisticated smart building management systems, says another CDM Smith executive, Scott Aldridge, the firm’s innovation and disruptive technologies leader.

“With the Internet of Things (IoT) and the growing availability and use of sensors, there’s are many different use cases for using AR,” he says, adding that it could also be a platform for growth in the new frontier of cognitive computing. “There are a lot of places to go with AR in the area of asset management.”

About the Author

Tom Zind | Freelance Writer

Zind is a freelance writer based in Lee’s Summit, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected].

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