B6 - Course Reflection

Ten weeks have come and flown by. These previous few weeks I have learned so much about robotics, AI in construction and future, 3D Printing in construction, designing in Revit and much more. In particular, I have learned a lot about digital building. This has been one of the most simple yet, challenging classes. I am grateful that I took this class as my professional elective. This class will ponder my future as an architectural engineer. The number of things I have learned in this class tremendous and to briefly condense what I learned in class, I would have to say that I learned how to use blogger. I have a superior understanding of how different ways of intaking data can prompt different versions of understanding. 
For instance, I believe that the weekly blogs and writing comments to others empower the student to take look at the two sides of arguments and form opinions from incorporating their general and personal opinions to new pieces of information. Also, this class has a lot of exercises that were challenging yet, helpful. For instance, using the MC Access database. The main difficulty I faced with this exercise simply stemmed from a lack of experience. However, as an engineer, I am always looking forward to new challenges and expanding my own abilities. In turn, I embraced the challenges faced with this exercise and was excited to learn more.

Although it took me some time to get used to the new, complex system, I eventually worked my way through my initial troubles to gain a better grasp on how all of the various functions of the database operates. In turn, I can now say that I understand the basics of kinds of databases and how specifically Object-Oriented databases function as well.

In conclusion, I am very thankful I engaged in this class, especially as a senior who is about to enter the labor force and work with new and modern types of programs and databases. 

Comments:


Ina Sison: Ina, I agree with you, following the instructions of the assignments was really straight forward for me as well. Professor Mitchell did an amazing job teaching this class. Also, good luck with your last coop.
https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/03/b6-course-reflection.html?showComment=1583459434620#c8209191462985013245



Amanda Kolar: Amanda, I agree with how the use of relational databases and Dynamo can help with the organization of structural components of design for various buildings or projects. When I first began to work on the database, I became quicker and better at navigating its resources. This especially helped me with defining, finding, and recording sensor characteristics in the database of design for various buildings.https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/03/b6-course-reflection_9.html?showComment=1583635808830#c4862027143751070328



Mika Awai: Mika, I agree with what you wrote. I am too had no idea what was the database and how it operated. This was my first time using MS Access. Moreover, I agree with how Professor Mitchell has a way of making us learn a ton of information in an easy to manage the way. I watched the video uploaded in BBLearn the process became a lot smoother and easier for me. Professor Mitchell expertly laid out how to use the database and programs and as a result, I found the exercise a lot more simple and straightforward. https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/03/week-10-course-reflection.html?showComment=1583637126688#c8292613843515964582

Databases in Design Offices

The use of databases is very prevalent in offices where individuals are working on building design. These databases have been used for a long time in accomplishing tasks such as cataloging components, keeping track of customer requests, and creating marketplaces. As big data has become more relevant this list of tasks has continued to increase. Big data describes much larger databases and can fuel much more powerful applications.

The power companies that can manage to collect and store large amounts of data has become relevant through the growth of AI and will continue to become more relevant. The usage of neural nets and other complex modeling methods become more accurate when larger amounts of data are fed into the model. With more instances, the models are able to learn more complex patterns in the data and the impact of extreme outliers is reduced. For design offices, this could mean building models to predict what areas will have the need for new buildings in the future. Additionally, they can predict the future price of specific materials so they can better plan when they should buy materials and what materials they should buy. By accurately making these predictions, companies can safe large amounts of money and make more informed decisions. These examples only scrape the surface of what this type of applications big data can fuel and will continue to fuel. However, storing large amounts of data poses some issues.

As companies desire to store more data, alternative methods of storing this data has become necessary. Traditional ways of storing data have become very expensive and insecure. Storing large amounts of data on a single system poses a serious threat to the integrity of the data if something were to happen to the system. Partially for this reason, distributed storage has evolved. Distributed storage allows users to store their data on shards across a variety of clusters. This avoids the need for massive amounts of storage on a single system and allows companies to store portions of backups across various systems. As these methods become more and more affordable, the storage required to access big data will become more frequent.

Comments
Brian: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/b5-what-is-sql-and-why-is-it-important.html
I think your analysis of SQL gave a really good overview of what the language is and what it accomplishes. I agree with you that SQL fulfills a very important task in proving a uniform way pull data. Although SQL is primarily designed for relational databases, there are many SQL-like languages that operate very similarly to SQL and work on non-relational databases. Good work!

Amanda: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/b5-object-oriented-databases_8.html
I liked your thought on OOD and how you were able to make the ideas understandable to those who haven't been exposed to them before. Your analogy with the car gave a very realistic example of how to think of what a class is and how each class has different properties to it. The use of classes within databases and programming also adds another layer of organization to the system.

Mika: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/b5-mika-awai-sql-in-databases.html
You gave a very thorough explanation of the differences and key uses of SQL and NoSQL. I particularly liked how you discussed the advantages of learning SQL to excel in data science jobs. As someone, who has completed a Data Science internship I agree with you. I used SQL-like technology almost everyday throughout the duration of my coop. I was able to use SQL-like syntax when using pyspark to pull data from NoSQL databases as well. Learning pyspark had a very small learning curve once I knew SQL.

B4-Mynaugh

For this week's Blog Post, we are exploring our own individual projects that we are doing for this class. Now the subjects of the subjects could range from anything that will or has been aught for this course and due to the title being Intelligent buildings it'd be something along those lines. For my group, we wanted something more relevant to our field of work, and that is of the construction and, more specifically, how Artificial intelligence will be impacting it. The main course of action we wanted to take when exploring this was that of what are and will be the benefits of integrating AI into construction and, of course, the other side of the coin on what it could hinder. To list some of the benefits of AI, we wanted to delve into more was that of the efficiencies of how robotic labor could replace that of human labor. This in itself could direct our research in different avenues to the moral effects of said replacement to the actual method of how machines would be designed and program to handle these originally human tasks. However, if you manage to read my teammates' post that beyond the physical implementation of AI, we will also explore the implications of the digital impact. This could go from the automation of sorting through information or having programs in place that could react to new engineering obstacles. The paths laid before can vary greatly so within the coming weeks we will endeavor to bring these array of ideas into focus for the presentation of our final project


Comments

Hey Isabel,
Reading over your blog has piqued my interest in regards to how the ever-growing smart home market will have on that of the mechanical aspect of home improvement.  As I am not too familiar with Revit's mechanical portion in measuring cooling loads and the like, do you think that the active sensors in today's technologies are sufficient enough now to make these future changes that you re hinting at? Nonetheless, I look forward to your future presentation.


Andre,

Reviewing your proposed term project has me intrigued, and the possibilities Dynamo has to offer. To state outright, I have zero background on how Dynamo is used and only the vaguest idea of what can result from implementing it in a project. However, since we both are in the sam senior design group, do you think to have this experience perhaps a year before now would've abled you to have good enough grasp of Dynamo that you could've used for our senior design? Just seeing the tasks you are attempting t accomplish seems very useful had we the time to implement it sooner. Nonetheless, seeing the final results of both this project and that of our senior design will be exciting.

Hey Cory,

It seems you have the makings of an interesting project. Having modular designs is definitely a trend that is taking off as of late. One that comes to mind is that of an AEI competition project, I saw that was a retrofit of a hospital, and the team made the decision to have the hospital room be all prefabricated and simply put into place during construction. They had it laid out that all the mechanical, plumbing, and electrical systems in these units were easy to install and had quick connections that reduced clutter. Best of luck with your project!

B4 - Liam Ossenfort - The Future of Artificial Intelligence

After creating the outline for my paper, I am getting excited to begin my research. The basis of my research will be on the future of Artificial Intelligence. Starting off I will be discussing what Artificial Intelligence is and what current views society has on the technology. Following the introduction, I will be looking at all the current advantages and disadvantages that come with Artificial Intelligence today as well as the ways it is being utilized both within and outside of the engineering community. After the research on Artificial Intelligence today I plan to go in depth on several potential, future aspects of Artificial Intelligence. I would like to research when Artificial Intelligence will make a breakthrough and attempt to set my own timeline, what audience will be the primary target for future implementations of Artificial Intelligence, meaning will it target the general public or be prioritized for enterprise use, and lastly I would like to touch on who my pioneer the Artificial Intelligence field (Google, Microsoft, etc.). I plan to go over similar criteria for the future as I did for the present, so potential advantages and disadvantages for future Artificial Intelligence technologies, followed by a discussion on how Artificial Intelligence may be utilized by people both within and outside the engineering community. My conclusion will display how Artificial Intelligence will affect our everyday lives as citizens and whether the benefits of this technology will outweigh the risks it could potentially hold.

Comments to others:

Isabel Brooks

https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/b4-how-intelligent-building-technology.html

Isabel, I like how you chose a topic so closely related to the course. You seem to have a good sense of what you are going to research since you have already begun the process of finding articles on your subject matters. Breaking your research into the three separate technologies you plan to explore will make for an easier organization process, I look forward to reading more of your work!

Andre Morris

https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/code-compliant-automation-through-dynamo.html

Andre, I enjoy any project regarding automation. Your outline for the project seems clear and concise, and you seem to have an understanding on how the scripting must be executed; that was a concern I was having when reading through your desired deliverables was the organization of the scripts you need to complete this task, but you have everything planned out well and I am excited to follow your progress.

Cory Christopher

https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/cory-christopher-modular-construction.html

Cory, I have read about this before and it is a very interesting topic. I personally see many advantages to modular construction, but I am not too knowledgeable in the field of construction. I am curious as to if whatever downfalls it may have will outweigh the benefits of this method, I will have to follow up on your blogs to get more information!

Course Project

For my course project I decided to build a machine learning model to predict the amount of energy a building will use based on characteristics of the building and weather trends. The machine learning model will be trained on a dataset merged from two Kaggle datasets. One dataset includes information about each building including its primary use, total square feet, the year it was built in, and the number of floors in the building. The other Kaggle dataset includes information taken from each site the buildings are located at and includes air temperature, precipitation measurements, and wind speed. This model has two primary use cases. This model is useful as it will allow building owners to compare the expected future energy output given the current characteristics of the building to a theoretical version of the building with modified characteristics. This will allow building owners to make more informed decisions about energy consumption when planning modifications to their buildings.

In terms of methodology, this has been a difficult problem to build a good cross validation strategy for. Typically, in machine learning, datasets can be randomly split into training and test sets. Usually the training set has about 80% of the data and is used to make the model learn patterns in the data, while the test set is used to gauge how well the model is performing. However, for this problem I needed to set up a time series cross-validation strategy. In essence, I had to create the training and test sets in such a way that in any given split of the data, all the training data preceded the test data chronically. This step was necessary because it is not useful to gauge a model’s performance by training on ‘future’ data predicting ‘past’ data. Once, I implemented a working cross validation strategy, I was able to start creating new characteristics about each building from the existing ones and see measurable gains in performance on the test set. I am currently still working on creating more new features, and will soon be moving into feature selection and tuning the hyper-parameters of the model.

Comments
Abdul: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/b4-ai-in-construction.html
I thought this was a very good introduction to some of the advantages and disadvantages of AI. You are correct in saying AI has successfully decreased human error across a variety of fields. Artificial intelligence can simultaneously keep far more variables in memory than the human mind can and learning can be simulated much quicker than the way in which we learn. This is fantastic for solving complex logic puzzles quickly.

Pritesh: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/02/blog-post-4-project-description.html
Gaining more exposure to existing technology sounds like a great fun project to work on. I'm interested to see what type of design you can construct and hope to learn something new from it. I am also new to Revit so understand the amount of learning this will take.

Ina: https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/01/project-robotics-in-construction.html
I really liked your view on having robots automate the tedious heavy work to give humans more freedom. Metal and machinery is far better at lifting heavy things repeatedly without tiring out than us. By letting the robots take care of this labor intensive side we give humans more time to be creative and innovative. Although, this will initially get rid of some jobs I believe it has the ability to create time for more meaningful and enjoyable activities.

Blog 1. HVAC, sensors, AI, database and future. 

For this first blog post the task was to investigate a few assigned topics, evaluate them and write about them. For the group I am in the topics were HVAC, sensors, AI, database and future. The topics are seemingly very different and don’t have anything in common. However, I think there is a clear connection. My approach to this post was about how I could convey that connection to the reader. Let’s see if it worked out. 

The AI seems like a good point to start with.

One of the articles that caught my attention was the one by Lindsey Ellis titled “Hey, Alexa, Should We Bring Virtual Assistants to the Campus? These Colleges Gave Them a Shot”. That talks about ASU and Georgia Tech students’ experiences with Echo Dots. There were 60 of the devices distributed and they were given basic data access to students schedules and grades. The participants struggled at first to incorporate the devices in their everyday life, however, after certain time the devices became essential in helping students to deal with common tasks. The challenge that was faced during this experiment was due to lack of centralized database.

In the past couple years AI went from being a “scary robot” from a science fiction movie to something most people with smartphones and laptops are exposed to every day. With the introduction of virtual assistant home devices any home can be converted into a smart home and customized based on the user’s preferences. 

Which brings us to the next two articles that I read about HVAC and sensors. 

”5 New Technology Trends Reshaping the HVAC industry” by Grainger introduces five unique approaches to HVAC systems. Major part in HVAC improving is reducing power consumption without reducing functionality. One of the tactics is creating a smart HVAC that not only able to alert the user about maintenance but using improved sensing array adjust thermostats, or airflows in the different parts of the building based on the usage and not only settings. The improved sensing array can be created using the sensors that were introduced by Angela Lang in “Here Comes the Thermoelectric future: We Tried Out the Next Generation of Self-Powered Sensors”. The sensors that were introduced, not require any external batteries and being powered up by thermal energy.

So imagine a building that is “inhabited” by an AI. But not just any AI -  it has access to a vast database (such as internet) if there is any information needed, it controls smart HVAC that is self-maintained and can diagnose any flows in its functioning, it is monitoring multiple sensors inside to provide the best internal environment and it is also able to store the data for future evaluation. There are buildings like that out there and with the development of the modern technology they are not the future anymore, they are present.

Sources 

1. 5 New Technology Trends Reshaping the HVAC industry. Grainger,12/2016, https://www.grainger.com/content/supplylink-5-trends-reshaping-hvac-industry?ef_id=CjwKCAiA6vXwBRBKEiwAYE7iS-4Chlv1ArRPRo82RayOF-9XliG8e5HbNAV2lY0wfTkDKio3qshYKRoC8DwQAvD_BwE:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!2966!3!380017044231!b!!g!!&cm_mmc=PPC:+Google+PPC
2. Angela Lang, Here Comes the Thermoelectric future: We Tried Out the Next Generation of Self-Powered Sensors. CNET, January 4, 2019, https://www.evernote.com/pub/view/aengineer/ae-510/d565a408-79a7-44b4-b4f6-b3f163bfb79a?locale=en#st=p&n=d565a408-79a7-44b4-b4f6-b3f163bfb79a
3. Lindsey Ellis. Hey, Alexa, Should We Bring Virtual Assistants to the Campus? These Colleges Gave Them a Shot. Technology, August 02, 2018, https://www.evernote.com/pub/view/aengineer/ae-510/cff1e0c7-03cd-4181-8f63-6a134b024f2b?locale=en#st=p&n=cff1e0c7-03cd-4181-8f63-6a134b024f2b

Comments.

Andre Morris post

I like that your post concentrates on looking at the topic from a different prospective. It is very true that most of the time we only focus on the benefits of the inventions and technology in general forgetting to evaluate the other side. However, I also want to point out that the society changes as well and the norms of the society evolve constantly. Some things that were not appropriate couple centuries ago are parts of our everyday activities nowadays. So we can not predict that future generations will have similar attitude to the topic as we do

https://ae-410-510-ay19-20.blogspot.com/2020/01/investigating-concerns-of-smart-city.html?showComment=1579032304054

Amanda Kolar post

I really like the article that you picked to talk about AI. It is a major concern and there is a lot of talk in the world about how rapidly the workforce needs change and how the "revolution" going to influence unemployment. The other side of the problem is how the education needs to be modernized in order to fulfill the new changes and demands. It is an interesting time we are all living in.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2403473360137505969&postID=3102666535582708709&page=1&token=1579033253944&isPopup=true