Experiencing Innovative Technologies at Citilab
On 17th of December Barcelona Technology School granted us the opportunity to visit Citilab, a digital lab for citizen innovation situated in Barcelona. The scope of this lab is to serve as a blend between a training and research center and an incubator of business and social initiatives.
Miguel Ángel Trabado, one of our professors from the Digital Transformation course, invited us to explore the lab. Before going he told us that we will be able to experience on hand some of the latest technologies that are either already in use or in the prototype phase.
As soon as we arrived, we got greeted by members of the lab and started with a tour of the the building. The first room we visited was the common area on the ground floor. Here we got to see some groups working with 3D printers and in house developed software to work with the printers. In the next floor we found and open area surrounded by offices. Companies occupy these spaces to develop their ideas and test them out.
The top floor was the most exciting. Here we got to play around with some advanced technology products. As we entered the room, we stepped on top of an image projected from the ceiling. You could play games and interact with this video projection by using your shadow. After that we looked at holograms and the new technologies used to create them. It was really interesting to see how some simple technologies could do something so incredible. We also saw some new ways for advertising products through projections on different sizes of objects or simply on a wall. We then had a real-life experience on how Augmented Reality can be used to promote products and attract customer attention. Lucio, the guide who was showing us around, gave us a presentation about hair products using an AR software where he is present in a video and based on his movement, different interactions would take place. Finally, we went back to the second floor and entered one of the offices where the company works on Virtual Reality products. We all had a chance to try their VR prototype and it was super-immersive. I already had some experience with VR, but the adventure they created was highly interesting and showed how far we can get with this technology.
This event really impressed me for different aspects. The first one is that it is really nice to be able to have a place where anyone in the community can go and share and acquire knowledge about new technologies but also about general topics. It was also inspiring to see how people working there are so passionate about what they do, so much that they invited us to try out all the latest technologies they had available. Finally, I was fascinated by the way that so simple technology can be used to create something that we could only find in science fiction books and movies.
Written by Roberto Corsi, Master in Digital Transformation Leadership student at Barcelona Technology School
