Autodesk Research

The beauty of an RSS feed is that new stuff gets added to a pile and I can sift the pile really fast instead of traveling to each and every blog I'm aware of. The time it takes just waiting for web pages to load even in this day and age of fairly ubiquitous and fast access would add up to serious time. I use Google's Reader, maybe not the best but it works for me either on the notebook PC or my phone. It isn't as rich an experience as actually visiting the blog itself but if there is some meat in a feed then it's a simple matter to go there for more.

Aaron at D|C|CADD's BLOG posted a bit about Project Dasher, an Autodesk Research project they are sharing some information and videos for now on their site. I heard about Dasher during a marketing session I attended on Monday at Autodesk University. It was pretty cool looking but the discussion was fairly brief so it slipped my mind since.

Here's their description for Project Dasher:
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Project Dasher is a web-based application that helps to augment existing Autodesk® Revit® design models with real-time building submeter and sensor data on electricity and occupancy. Using meter and sensor data, Autodesk Project Dasher aims to demonstrate the value of integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) and building instrumentation to provide building owners more insight into how existing buildings perform in real time and throughout the lifecycle of the building.
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Here's what their site has to say about what Autodesk Research is:

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Autodesk is working to help solve some of the world's most complex design problems, from pressing ecological challenges to the development of scalable smart infrastructure. Designers use Autodesk tools to not only create plans for buildings, for example, but also to simulate their impact on the environment and track their performance over time.

Autodesk Research is unique in that we are dedicated to innovation and discovery in this realm. Our interests range from methods to help users learn powerful digital prototyping tools, to visualization and simulation techniques which enable designers to achieve new levels of performance. Advancing the state of the art in human-computer interaction, computer graphics, and digital design technology, we collaborate openly with researchers at leading universities around the world.
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My first thought after reading this was how does this connect to Autodesk Labs? It doesn't appear to literally connect and I didn't see any mention of a connection but I suspect Labs can get involved once research moves beyond academic research and can become a product focused concept? Enough conjecture on my part.

You can watch a Project Dasher VIDEO. I didn't see a way to embed it here because it isn't hosted at You Tube. There is a second VIDEO which is an interview titled "Extending BIM to Real-Time Energy Performance Monitoring".