News
Research into the future at Homelab
The new Homelab at the Computer Science department, in the Faculty of Sciences, will open in early April.
Here, researchers can study such topics as the ‘living room of the future’. Researchers and Master’s students have a number of super-modern, interactive systems at their disposal. For instance, sensors in the room’s walls and ceiling can monitor the locations of people who have been fitted with a special chip as they move through this space.
Large plasma screens can automatically display information that is tailored to the wishes of individuals entering the room. Such technology can facilitate research, for instance, into ways of further personalizing the information that currently reaches us via radio, TV, PC, and mobile phone. The sensors can also be used for network research, which explores the way in which groups and individuals spread out to occupy the space in the room. Researchers can also monitor subjects’ heartbeat, respiration, and concentration, which enables them to monitor the ways in which these individuals react to specific impulses.
Video conferences can also be held in the Homelab. Since it is also a social space, staff and students meet one another informally in this setting.
Setting up the Homelab is part of VU University Amsterdam’s efforts to improve the quality and quantity of space on campus, while the construction of new buildings continues. It is a subproject of the ‘Continuation Plan for the Maths and Physics building’, which is intended to provide more space and good, professional housing for the science faculties in the Maths and Physics building. This plan is scheduled for completion in mid-2010.
