Pasi Vahimaa and Juha Eskelinen : Sm4rtlab: internet of things meets augmented reality in laboratories
‘Using one another’s labs will be the future of all labs’ Pasi Vahimaa en Joha Eskelinen (both University of East Finland) predicted, when presenting their project ‘Sm4rtlab’. The idea of Sm4rtlab is to maximise the use of expensive labs and infrastructures by making it possible to control the devices and cooperate on distance via an internet-of-things-cloud-solution.
They virtualised Pashi’s optometric lab in Finland with Unity, so experiments in the lab can be done at a distance. In the virtual environment equipment can be controlled via the Internet of Things. Webcams show what happens in the lab. With the Hololens one can project and control your own environment in the virtualised lab.
If the virtualised lab is not connected to the real lab it is possible to do more experiments at the same time. Virtualised components can also be duplicated: you buy one lens and one laser and you are able to create a setup with 100 lenses.