Science fiction made in Dresden: TU Dresden opens a holodeck

A room that redefines reality

The holodeck is a room whose walls consist entirely of LED surfaces. They display images in real time — so convincingly that visitors get the feeling of actually being there. Unlike VR headsets, which isolate users individually, several people inside the room can experience the same digital world simultaneously. Researchers at the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), a Cluster of Excellence at TU Dresden, want to investigate how people make decisions and interact with one another in digital environments. Companies could test products as virtual prototypes before building them. The system also allows researchers to study how people react when digital worlds become increasingly realistic and the boundaries between physical and virtual environments begin to blur.

Immersive research spaces such as the holodeck are currently being developed at universities and in industry around the world. Dresden has also experimented with similar environments in the past. At the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, for example, researchers created a room in which visitors can walk through cell structures using 3D glasses. At HTW Dresden, scientists are working on immersive environments that can be built comparatively cheaply using screens and projectors. The special feature of the TU Dresden approach is the use of large LED walls and the fact that human-machine interaction, digital working environments and communication research are being studied together in one system..