Xiaoyu Liu's Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Xiaoyu (Sherry) and I'm currently a senior major in Architectural Engineering with a concentration in HVAC at Drexel University. I'm taking Intelligent building this term because I need a professional elective class and this course seems interesting and I have heard really positive feedback from the students who have taken this class in the past. Another reason why I chose to take this class was that I worked for Bentley System for one of my coops as a BIM consultant intern for a short period of time and that was the first time I learned about BIM.

My expectation for this course is to learn more about the technologies that are associated with my major and also learn more about one of the three topics: database, networks, and BIM through researching in the group project.

One interesting Evernote I found was called "Teleoperating robots with virtual reality: getting inside a robot's head". The article talked about a new VR system being developed by MIT research teams for people to teleoperate a robot. And the system called "Homunculus Model" would embed people in a control room with sensor displays and make people feel like they are inside robot's body and from there they could control the robots matching movement. I found it interesting because it reminded me of one epistle from Black Mirror that I watched. It was about a husband who agreed to a procedure to transfer his vegetative wife's consciousness into his mind. It is just crazy to think how close that is to happen in the real life with the fast phase of the development of technology.

I don't know much about intelligent building yet but for now, I would define it as the use of technologies such as building information modeling, database, and network to make the process of designing buildings more efficient.