Smart Appliance Lab

Researcher: Thomas Kirste, Thomas Heider, Martin Giersich, Christiane Reisse, Christoph Burghardt  

Runtime: since 2006

The "Smart Appliance Lab" or SmartLab is our testbed for an intelligent ambient environment. In this lab, we try to research new ways in Human Computer Interaction. Smart environments should adapt to the user's needs by assisting the users pro-actively with his task. This helps the user to focus on his actual task instead of operating the installed devices.

We have a distributed SmartLab, that consists of two rooms. Both rooms are augmented with sensors and devices to sense changes in the environment. The sensor infrastructure consists of cameras, an ultrawideband positioning system with active tags and mobile acceleration sensors. The positioning system estimates the position, direction and velocity of the tags. The acceleration sensors measure the activity of the attached object. With the help of this information, the Team Intention Tracker can infer the current intention of the users.

The rooms can adapt to the user's needs and serve him in different scenarios. Among the installed devices are e.g. six projectors. One projector is move-able, so it can reach different surfaces. To ease managing the displays in the room, we developed the Automatic Document Display Mapping. All surfaces, sunblinds, climate control and lamps can be remote controlled via EIB. This makes it possible to configure the room as a smart meeting room as well as a lecture room. We can even implement scenarios from pervasive learning, like teleteaching, by connecting the rooms via the Internet.

SmartLab Infrastructure