IoT and Mobile Technology Laboratory

Internet of Things (IoT) and Mobile Technology Laboratory is a place where a wide range of professional activities are carried out and where the entire development cycle can be covered, from rapid hardware prototyping to the creation of full-fledged application solutions.

A wide range of development and prototyping boards is available in the laboratory, from the traditional Arduino UNO to the specialized Arduino Mega with a larger number of I/O pins and the compact Arduino Nano to the LilyPad designed for wearables. For projects requiring more computing power and built-in connectivity, the ESP8266 and ESP32 modules with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support are used. For the most demanding tasks, you can use single-board computers Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 or the powerful Odroid N2+, which can run a full-fledged operating system, database, webserver, etc. directly at the edge of the network.

The laboratory has an extensive portfolio of sensors that covers common environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, light intensity and motion, as well as offers modules for specialized measurements, such as strain gauge weight sensors, pH probes for chemical and biological analyses, or CO₂ and VOC detectors for air quality monitoring. Thanks to this combination, it is possible to build both simple data loggers and complex multi-sensor systems with local or cloud data processing. The hardware part is complemented by smartphones and tablets of various generations, which are used to test and debug mobile applications, verify user interfaces, and at the same time can function as collection gateways or end devices. Thanks to this, it is possible to demonstrate and test a wide range of smart applications in the laboratory, from automation in the Smart Home environment through intelligent Smart Cities infrastructure to access systems or industrial IoT scenarios, and to verify their functionality in real conditions.

Another area that the laboratory includes is solutions for indoor localization, i.e. the design and implementation of location tracking systems in enclosed spaces. BLE-based Beacon technology can determine the location of devices indoors, and once integrated into mapping systems, the location of mobile devices in a building can be further refined by combining data from Wi-Fi and BLE signal propagation. For projects that require even higher accuracy (in the order of centimeters), prototyping boards with ultra-wideband (UWB) technology (mainly DW/DWM series modules) are also available, allowing for the implementation of advanced methods for measuring the distance and time of flight of the signal. This opens up space for experiments with hybrid localization systems that combine UWB, BLE, and Wi-Fi to achieve reliable positioning even in complex indoor environments.

Last but not least, the laboratory has several robotic platforms. Designed for experiments in robotics and automation, the mobile robotic unit allows you to develop and test algorithms for scanning and analyzing objects, and generates real-time 2D and 3D models using LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, and a Kinect depth camera to map the surroundings, so it can observe three-dimensional structures in detail. The second machine is the FIM bot, which is a humanoid, non-autonomous avatar designed to demonstrate human-robot interaction, testing gestures, voice commands and service scenarios. Collaborative robot arms also complete the range. One assembled from commonly available prototyping components and then a six-axis MechArm from Elephant Robotics, which expands the laboratory's capabilities with experiments with human-robot manipulation and collaboration.

The IoT and Mobile Technologies Laboratory thus represents a comprehensive environment for development in the field of modern technologies, from Arduino microcontrollers and powerful single-board computers to a rich portfolio of sensors and mobile devices to precise indoor localization solutions and robotic platforms.

The laboratory was funded by the project:

Development of the Environment for Doctoral Studies at UHK, Project No.: CZ.02.01.01/00/22_012/0007388