Ayanna Howard Is artificial intelligence the future of civil engineering?
Yes, probably, but here’s the thing: it’s also the present. Renowned roboticist Ayanna Howard, Ph.D., says artificial intelligence is already around us every day.
“What I don’t think a lot of people realize is that between when you wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night, you are using some type of tool or gadget that has incorporated AI,” Howard said. “So, we are using AI in pretty much all aspects of our lives.”
Howard serves as the dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering and has been on the cutting edge of AI research for more than three decades. Named one of the most powerful women engineers in the world by Business Insider and a top 50 woman in tech by Forbes, Howard will deliver the keynote at the ASCE 2024 Convention Oct. 6-9 in Tampa, Florida.
She recently spoke with Civil Engineering Source about her career and what civil engineers need to know about artificial intelligence.
Civil Engineering Source: How should civil engineers be using AI already in their work?
Ayanna Howard: One of the things that civil engineers have started to do is to figure out how to use data to do things more intelligently. If you think about things like digital twins … now you model all the possibilities – whether it’s thinking about sustainability, energy efficiency, or questions like “What’s going to happen if you have the winter apocalypse in, say, Atlanta?” What kind of materials do we need to think about?
These are things that allow civil engineers to use data that’s correlated with infrastructure and the environment to create better, more sustainable structures. That modeling – and that injection of information to come up with greater insights – is a form of AI.
Source: You’ve done a lot of research with robots and human-robot interaction. Do you see anything there that might relate to the future of civil engineering?
Howard: So what I see now when you are on a construction site, you have your architects, your civil engineers, your owners – and you can now use surveying equipment in the form of drones or mobile robots to look not only at your plans but to align them with the actual construction. How do you think about placement of the different types of piping or electrical conduits and make sure they actually match the specs that you have identified as an engineer? All these things you can look at as the mobile robots or the drones are sensors that provide the data and modelling to ensure that your designs are matching what’s going on in the field in real-time.
So, now we see companies that are designing, developing, deploying, and selling these abilities as services to firms so that you can use them in the field. … And here at Ohio State, we have a drone program where students are learning how to fly a drone, collect infrastructure data, collect sensor data, and then you use it for projects. … That’s an example of teaching students new skills that still couple with fundamental theories they’re learning in the classroom.
Source: How did you find your way into this world? How did it become the focus of your research?
Howard: I’ve known I wanted to do robotics pretty much since middle school. I just didn’t know what kind of robots. I actually thought I wanted to build a bionic woman, so you could think of that more as healthcare robotics.
My first job in robotics was with NASA – at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I was focused on science-driven robotics, working on how to develop the intelligence for rovers to navigate unknown terrain by themselves. You could think of it as a standard mapping function if you’re thinking about civil engineers and surveyors. That’s what I was doing with my rovers.
Then when I joined academia, I still worked on science-driven robotics but expanded into the healthcare robotics space, so that naturally got me to where I first began when I thought about robotics and the bionic woman.
Source: So you were attuned to the AI revolution at a very young age.
Howard: I saw all the things that j0urnalists and science fiction writers were creating and designing in their movies and books. At the time, that’s really what I was drawn to. I always say, “Imagination fuels engineering,” and engineering is now fueling imagination. So I think we have this interplay of creativity and engineering that allows us to build a better world.
Source: AI has become a really hot topic, and I think a lot of people are still freaking out about what they’ve been able to see ChatGPT do. But someone like you has seen this more as a steady arc over time. What’s been the biggest change in AI over your career?
Howard: AI is not new, although I think a lot of individuals are like, “Oh my gosh, where did this come from? How did I not see it?”
I think what has changed is really what we call generative AI, which is things like ChatGPT or Gemini, or Claude, and the ease of using generative AI in everyday work. That has been a change.
The AI that I design and develop in my research – and have in the past years – still requires an engineer or a computer scientist to actually do anything interesting. But [a lot of generative AI] has become a tool. It’s as easy to use as opening up a document and typing or creating your own movie using whatever movie producer application is available to you.
Because of that difference, what we’re now seeing is an acceleration of AI, where people are very much aware of using it in their day-to-day activities, making their lives more effective and efficient.
That’s really the difference. It’s no longer only in the lab, in the research, behind the scenes. AI is in a lot of applications now, and people are using it themselves. That’s the change.
Register for the ASCE 2024 Convention to hear more from Ayanna Howard and learn more about AI and the technology changing the civil engineering profession.
