Assistive and Sustainable Technology

This lab includes instrumentation for water, wastewater, gas and vapor analyses (Gas chromatography, ion chromatography, Atomic Absorption), instrumentation for materials characterization (BET surface area, TGA, DSC, zeta potential), and tools for test system design and construction.

Led by assistant professor of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Jinjuan She, Ph.D., the Human-Centered Design Research Lab at Miami University conducts design research at the intersection of engineering and psychology, with the goal of advancing theories and methodologies that keep end-users at the center of the design process and support individual and group decision making of engineers and designers. One theme studies end-user behaviors and product design such as decision rules used in product evaluation, perceptions and preferences that characterize design attributes, and latent needs and pain points that imply design opportunities. The other theme partially leverages findings from user research to support engineer and designer decision making, such as enablers and barriers in implementing user-centered design, heuristics to support better system thinking, and how the interactions of user-centered design and system thinking affect interdisciplinary collaborations. Research from both themes are also integrated with engineering design education.

The MyPath Project, led by associate professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering Vaskar Raychoudhury, Ph.D., aims to build an accessible routing and navigation system for wheelchair users to get to their destination from any location. Accessible routes can be determined by classifying surfaces from vibration data. The data collected by sensors is analyzed and classified and the ML model is used to predict any new surface data. The road surface information is then updated in a research-oriented open-source mapping system known as the OpenStreetMap (OSM). The user’s personalized requirements and the accessibility of each road are combined to generate an accessible route for wheelchair users.