tl;dr

  • The iXperience Lab is a space designed for developing intelligent and immmersive human-computer interaction systems.
  • The lab's hardware includes a 180° projection screen and a floor projection system, as well as VR and AR systems, sensors, cameras, and software development tools.
  • The lab is used in various lectures and also hosts events, including a girls' day.
  • The lab engages in research and development, applying knowledge from fields such as psychology, sociology, cognition, and design.

    • iXperience Lab

    As major part of my current employment at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, I am responsible for the iXperience Lab. Together with Prof. Dr. Wölfel, we conceptualized the space in order to offer an ideal room for future interaction while maintaining enough flexibility for projects.

    We came up with a solution to create a “room within a room” by using a truss system that spans the entire space.

    Top down view of the iXperience Lab
    Top down view of the iXperience Lab. Yellow Cones show the tracking range of our Azure Kinect Systems. Blue show Audio. Render made with Blender

    Idea of the Lab

    The iXperience Lab focuses on developing intelligent and immersive systems to advance the experience of human-computer interaction. The lab’s primary objective is to provide students with opportunities to gain experience with current technologies and to realize their own projects. The lab tackles not only technically demanding challenges such as gesture and speech recognition, augmented and virtual reality, but also explores new approaches, such as Calm Computing and Deep Learning. In addition, in the lab, we apply knowledge from the fields of psychology, sociology, cognition and design. In cooperation with industry and museums, application-related projects are realized, demonstrated and evaluated.

    Whenever possible, projects from the lab are made Open Source, such as the Virtual Reality Scientific Toolkit (VRSTK)

    Hardware

    We offer a wide range of hardware ready to use or for students to borrow when needed.

    • Workstation PCs (Geforce 2080TI / Quadro RTX 5000)
    • Virtual Reality: 50x Meta Quest 2, HTC Vive (Pro, Pro-Eye, Pro 2)
    • Augmented Reality: Hololens 2
    • Immersive Experience: 180° Projektionsleinwand (~10x2.2m), Floor Projection (~4,5x2,5m)
    • Tracking: HTC Vive Tracker, Notch, Intel Realsense D415 + D435, Microsoft Kinect v1 + v2, ZED MINI, Tobii EyeTracker 4c
    • Tinkering: Arduino Starter Kits
    • Sensing: Emotiv Epoc X EEG, BITalino Psychobit (u.a. ECG- & EDA-Sensoren)
    • Audio: RODE Wireless GO II; RODE NT55
    • Video: Qoo Cam (360° Kamera)
    • Game Engines: Unity Pro, Unreal
    • Software Development: C#, Python, Tensorflow, Pytorch, RASA
    • 3D Grafikprogramme: Blender
    • Creative Tools: Adobe Suite, Audacity
    • Engineering Tools: Matlab

    Lectures

    The iXperience Lab is used in various lectures:

    • Intuitive und Perzeptive Benutzungsschnittstellen
    • Augmented & Virtual Reality
    • Wahrnehmungsbasierte Interaktion
    • We regularly host a girls day event in our lab
    test setup
    Example project within the iXperience Lab
    test setup
    Rearranging projectors for optimal projection mapping setup
    test setup
    Setup projection mapping
    test setup
    Setup with physical proxies: virtual round trip with the Hindenburg Zeppelin on the 180° Screen