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Building with mixed reality




Building in mixed reality
Building in mixed reality

Imagine being able to visualise at full scale a building model without having to leave the office – or overlay it onto a structure under construction for comparison.

Now, using mixed reality technology, University of Cambridge researchers are enabling engineers, architects and inspectors to do exactly that, saving valuable time.

The Department of Engineering’s construction IT laboratory is collaborating with Trimble and Microsoft to develop the technology.

Wearing a virtual reality-style headset, it allows users to “inhabit their designs in a natural and immersive way”, enabling them to visualise fully-textured building information models at full size in their offices or superimposed on the real structure at construction sites.

Dr Ioannis Brilakis, who has been pioneering as-is virtualisation of infrastructure since 2005, said: “We have never been able to bring 3D models of buildings and bridges off our screens and onto the real structure or at full scale into the working environment.”

The Bridge Inspector HoloLens app created by the Cambridge team enables engineers to inspect the condition of infrastructure in the office as if they were on site.

Rather than sending structural engineers to carry out time-consuming visual inspections, high-resolution images can be taken by local teams and sent to inspection engineers. These are automatically mapped onto 3D models and structural engineers can review the bridge’s integrity in mixed reality using HoloLens. It should improve efficiency, cut costs and ensure bridges do not enter the ‘failure zone’, prompting road closures.

Dr Brilakis said: “Bringing a bridge to life at full scale while still being aware of your surroundings is a major time saver for experienced inspectors.”

The team has also created the Progress Monitoring HoloLens app, which enables engineers to bring 4D design models to site and intelligently superimpose them on a structure.

Construction inspectors will be able to visualise progress and detect elements of the building that should have been constructed.

“All elements missing are marked as behind-schedule automatically in the 4D model simply by looking at them during an inspection visit,” said Marianna Kopsida, the PhD student responsible for the project.

The researchers are working on guiding inspectors and directing their attention to the most significant elements on their task list.

“This is all about productivity and improving workflows,” said Dr Brilakis.



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