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Greg and Annie Stevens Intelligent Infrastructure Engineering Lab

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Virtually Bringing Buildings to Life

Students in front of a virtual reality screen in an engineering labUD's Greg and Annie Stevens Intelligent Infrastructure Engineering Lab is a cutting-edge virtual and mixed-reality lab. The lab provides researchers, students and stakeholders within the Dayton community an advanced visualization system and toolset that fosters research in smart, sustainable, resilient and reliable infrastructure systems to take on the engineering challenges of today and tomorrow.

The lab isn't just for civil engineers — UD researchers in artificial intelligence help refine techniques to automate detection of building defects. Experts in human factors and psychology examine how people interact with the building to see if it's user-friendly.

This lab was made possible by a gift from Greg ('93, civil engineering) and Annie Stevens. "This new modeling simulator and innovation space will provide a unique high tech tool to learn the new methods of designing for the future," Greg said at the lab's opening in 2022. "Building in detail in a virtual environment is critical to meeting the budget and timing constraints of large projects."

Our Research in Action
Our Research in Action
Our Research in Action

Lab Capabilities

  • Explore in all directions: Users load blueprints (or any other computer-aided design drawings or sensor data) into the system, which then goes beyond photo mockups to create a virtual facility in which users can float up, down, side-to-side, through walls, onto the roof or into the basement — similar to 360-degree theaters.
  • Wrap-around projection VR system: Covers 300 square feet and serves as an immersive classroom environment where students can interact with and observe 1:1 scale job sites, equipment and data analytics and visualizations without having to leave campus.
  • Highly accurate motion tracking: Allows individuals and groups to walk through previsualizations of critical construction projects.
  • Multi-user, eye-tracking VR headset systems: Gives students and researchers a fully immersive experience to examine how participants experience an environment before it is constructed — then use that data to inform design decisions and future projects.