Welcome to the Lab: Season One Preview

00:00:09: What if a bed could tell you that something is wrong? Or a train could hear that the track needs repair before it breaks?

00:00:18: Welcome to Inside Immersion, the podcast of the Immersive Reality Lab at Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences.

00:00:25: I'm your host, Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons, Professor of Computer Science with a focus on immersive media.

00:00:32: I studied psychology before I moved into engineering, and that combination still shapes how I work:

00:00:40: I care less about what a technology can do, and more about what it does for the people using it. This podcast is a way of sharing that perspective. In this podcast, we talk about immersive technologies, data-driven systems and human–machine interaction, and how all of this connects to real problems in our everyday lives. In every episode of Season 1, I sit down with one of the researchers behind our projects: what the project is, how it works, and who it is for.

00:01:12: This season takes us from city streets and digital twins to regional railways, home care and rehab clinics.

00:01:21: Here's what's coming.

00:01:22: Episode 2: ARiadne. With Julie Henning, we explore how augmented reality can guide pedestrians through a city, with visuals, spatial sound and haptic cues, designed to include people who are usually left out of navigation apps.

00:01:39: Episode 3: DIDYMOS-XR.

00:01:42: Francesco Vona takes us into the world of digital twins: virtual copies of real places that update themselves when something changes.

00:01:51: It's a European project with fourteen partners.

00:01:55: Episode 4: DigiOnTrack.

00:01:57: Michael Stern explains how low-cost sensors on regional trains can "listen" to the rails, and how AI helps keep rural lines running.

00:02:05: Episode 5: SilentBedMonitor.

00:02:08: Michael is back, this time with small sensor boxes under a bed.

00:02:13: They can notice restless nights, coughing, a fall out of bed, or slow changes in weight, without a single camera.

00:02:22: Episode 6: MIA-PROM.

00:02:24: Navid Ashrafi from our lab shows how a conversational assistant, sometimes a virtual avatar and sometimes a robot head, can guide rehab patients through health questionnaires without overwhelming them.

00:02:37: Five projects, five conversations, and one question: how can technology actually help people?

00:02:43: Episodes 2 and 3 are available now.

00:02:46: After that, a new episode comes out on the first day of every month.

00:02:51: Follow Inside Immersion wherever you get your podcasts, and find the show notes at immersive-reality-lab.de.

00:03:02: Stay curious, stay critical,

00:03:05: and join us for Episode 2 of Inside Immersion.