Digital-Twin Infrastructure Science for Operation and Visualization in Engineering Resilience (DISCOVER) Laboratory
DISCOVER Lab
The DISCOVER lab is a research and educational hub developing a new generation of models and tools to perform digitalization of the built environment, with the ultimate goal of providing science-based methodologies for the resilience assessment of large-scale infrastructure systems. By blending Augmented and Extended Reality environments, advanced remote sensing techniques, structural health monitoring and numerical simulations, the DISCOVER lab advances science and technology in Infrastructure Resilience, tackling one of the major engineering challenges of the next decades.
The adoption of advanced digitalization techniques is poised to dramatically change the way civil infrastructure is planned, designed, constructed, maintained, and decommissioned. The cutting-edge research performed in the lab can be directly translated into practice by means of 1) meaningful collaborations with stakeholders and federal agencies, and 2) students’ engagement (with specific focus on undergraduates) and outreach activities. Advanced visualization techniques, in fact, have been proven to significantly increase the potential for communicating complex scientific concepts by means of accessible and immersive virtual environments.
DISCOVER Lab Equipment and Capabilities
The lab is composed of two spaces, one measuring 8.2m x 5.0m, housing 6 high-end workstations and a Virtual/Extended Reality (VR-XR) development space. A state-of-the-art XR-3 Varjo Head Mounted Display (HMD) is housed within the VR-XR development space, capable of rendering immersive Extended Reality environments by blending virtual (digital) and real-life objects in the simulations, making use of the high-resolution RGB and depth cameras mounted on the exterior of the headset.
The second space, measuring 6.0m x 5.5m is a laser-grade dark room housing a high-fidelity holographic table for 3-dimensional visualization and manipulation of digital twin models. The Axiom Holographic table housed in the DISCOVER Lab is a state-of-the-art holographic table capable of rendering 3-dimensional holographic images of maximum size 5ft x 5ft x 6ft. It is currently the only commercially available holographic solution that allows multi-user interaction with a given environment, while also allowing for advanced interactive presentations to third-parties via an external screen.
Equipment housed within the DISCOVER Lab also includes different platforms for performing Reality Capture, namely: (1) a Geodetics Geo-MMS Mapping system, comprising a Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR sensor and a Sony α1000 Digital Camera for LiDAR-RGB Data Fusion, capable of performing both aerial and terrestrial operations; (2) a heavy lift payload Inspired Flight IF-1200 Unmanned Aerial System; (3) a terrestrial Leica BLK-360 laser scanner equipped with spherical (360 x 300 calibrated spherical images) and thermal (FLIR-based longwave infrared) cameras.
