Playing battleship virtually und chatting with databases Five student groups amaze visitors with their work

Measuring the university campus
Under the title "MeasureMyCampus", seven computer science and business informatics students presented their experiments to measure the university campus. Using a 3D scanner from the German Maritime Museum, they scanned the student café on campus and used the data to create a three-dimensional model of the popular meeting place. This is visually impressive, but only partially suitable for measuring the space. They therefore sent two robots into the rooms to create 2D room maps. Using a black box they constructed themselves and produced using a 3D printer, inside which they installed various sensors, they were also able to measure the temperature, humidity and air quality of rooms in real time. Placed in the student café, the black box told them when it was open for guests, when it was busy and at what time cleaning took place. At their presentation stand, the students demonstrated the approximately 20 centimetre wide, twelve centimetre deep and five centimetre high black plastic box with its exciting inner workings. "The explorative project environment gave us a lot of freedom," says computer science student David Knoll happily. The group now hopes that other students will expand on their research results and that a three-dimensional plan of the university campus will soon be available.

How much energy is the solar system currently producing?
The "SmartHomeEnergy" project stand also focussed on measurement data collected in real time. Here, visitors could read live on monitors how high the current energy consumption is in a house equipped with smart home technology. The project's new students explained how technical systems, automated processes and networked devices can be used to provide homeowners or tenants with an overview of their actual energy consumption, as well as the energy production of solar panels on the roof of their home. This makes it possible to quickly decide whether to switch on my washing machine now or wait for the announced hours of sunshine in the afternoon.

A city tour of the future through Bremerhaven
"Our project is about getting people off the sofa and into Bremerhaven," explains Constantin van der Woude. If he and his fellow students from the "Seaside AR" project have their way, whingeing children on boring city tours will soon be a thing of the past. Using augmented reality, a computerised extension of perceived reality, they combine real places in Bremerhaven with additional information and collaborative game ideas. In their imagination, the "Seasidecoins", virtual coins won through skilful play, can then be exchanged for material things. Perhaps a ticket to the museum or a delicious ice cream that the children enjoy. This would also benefit the city. The concept and prototype realisation were commissioned from the students by the city council of the seaside city and the city marketing department "Erlebnis Bremerhaven".

Helpful support from colleague chatbot
Text-based dialogue systems that enable their users to chat with databases, so-called chatbots, are intended to improve and speed up processes in companies and are increasingly being used on websites or in company networks. On "Tag der Informatik" ("Computer Science Day"), the audience was introduced to two chatbots that students from the Master's degree programme in Digitalisation, Innovation and Information Management developed together with a company: The "Softfee" identifies suitable software programmes in an extremely likeable way, which employees can use to successfully solve tasks and requirements on the job. Taking "Xeri", an intelligent document management system, as an example, the second chatbot with the euphonious name "Xerinator" helps employees to quickly and politely find the documents they need to complete and develop a task from huge collections of documents within a company.
 
"A lot has happened in the past year," said Prof. Dr.-Ing Karin Vosseberg, Professor of Computer Science and Business Informatics and initiator of "Tag der Informatik" ("Computer Science Day"), summarising the impressive results achieved by the students. "You have struggled, achieved success, suffered setbacks and found solutions. You can be proud of what you have achieved this year."
 
(Authors: Karin Vosseberg and Isabelle Epplé)

Translated with the assistance of DeepL.