Rapid User-centered Design and Optimization of Lab Facilities

Hands-on laboratory work is where STEM students build the practical skills their careers depend on, yet many teaching and research labs remain difficult for people with physical disabilities to use. Even when university facilities meet the minimum requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, basic compliance does not necessarily address the spacing between benches, the height of workstations, where equipment is placed, or how easily wheelchair users can perform actual laboratory tasks. People with disabilities make up less than 3% of the STEM workforce, and structural barriers in the lab are one reason why.

The RUDOLF project is developing a generative artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit that rapidly and automatically produces accessible lab designs from building information modeling (BIM) plans. The toolkit identifies architectural barriers using ADA guidelines and other accessibility standards, then generates candidate layouts that accommodate people with mobility impairments. These can be used to plan new construction or to adapt existing classrooms and labs.

Each candidate design is turned into an immersive 3-D virtual or extended reality (VR/XR) lab. Participants, including wheelchair users and other relevant stakeholders, explore these virtual spaces, complete simulated laboratory and navigation tasks, rank and prioritize design features, and share their feedback and preferences. The research team also collects objective measures of movement and task performance, along with measures of workload, usability, and physiological responses. Following human-centered design principles, these experiences and measurements feed back into the AI toolkit to refine its recommendations. The team is also building optimization models that account for real lab workflows, including team-based tasks and equipment placement.

RUDOLF is not built for a single university or discipline. The goal is a tool that engineering departments, universities, and employers can use to design, evaluate, or adapt accessible rooms, equipment and workstations, from undergraduate teaching labs to biomedical labs and machining workshops, so that more students, teaching assistants and faculty with disabilities can take part fully in STEM.

Project Investigators

Dr. Brad Duerstock (Principal Investigator)

Dr. Nan Kong (Co-Principal Investigator)

Dr. Jiansong Zhang (Co-Principal Investigator)

Dr. Brandon Pitts (Co-Principal Investigator)

George Takahashi (Co-Principal Investigator)