The Home Lab
The CATCH Home Lab simulates normal living by mimicking the home or care environment, allowing volunteer users to simulate living normally, testing a range of technologies whilst being observed and evaluated by researchers.
The lab helps people identify their needs for technology. Offering a new way of working, the facility is a bridge between the laboratory-based research environment and the homes of people in the community.
Bringing patients, carers, clinicians and researchers together into this unique environment allows researchers to carefully analyse and understand the challenges faced by individuals, and work with them to design, develop and produce novel and practical solutions. The Home Lab helps enable the translation of research into real-world products and services.
Based in the centre of Sheffield, our new and improved Home Lab offers different areas to test new technologies, all of which – following its recent renovation – make the Home Lab a realistic and welcoming environment.
The open plan kitchen, dining and living area offers great accessibility, accurately reflecting the home with a dining table, comfortable seating area, television and coffee table as well as appliances such as a cooker and fridge. The separate bedroom also features a double bed and wardrobe.
With a hidden control room built into the lab, you can monitor and record your participants without them being disturbed.
The Home Lab is available for researchers from the University of Sheffield and external organisations to use for evaluating new technology.
Available technology
1 x wall mounted HD IP video camera that allows the user to remotely move around and zoom into the Home Lab
2 x HD IP video cameras that can be positioned around the Home Lab
Observer XT, a camera observer system for observing, recording and transcribing behaviour of users of technology
FaceReader software and cameras to automatically analyse the emotions of technology users as they use the technology in real-time
1 x Pepper Robot
2 x MiRo robots (one moving, one talking)
1 x Ubisense AngleID smart home RFID tracking system
2 x Sennheiser EW-112P G3 portable wireless microphone systems
7 x tablet computers: 1 Lenovo, 2 iPads and 4 Samsung Galaxy Tabs
1 x Samsung smart TV
Arriving soon
Further information