A sensory room has been created in the "Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration"

2023: Creating a sensory room

In September 2022, the Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration opened its doors in another building, and one of the features here was the sensory room, which was created by specialists from the Otkritie IT group. This was announced on February 1, 2023 by IT Otkritie Group.

Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration

According to the company, the touch room is a specially organized environment that is designed to stimulate various systems of perception of visitors, to influence feelings and sensations. Such stimulation helps in development, including creatively. Therefore, the sensory room has become an important element of the Center for Social Integration. Also, the room can be used directly for conducting classes, for example, by vocals or drawing. The task for the IT engineers of the Otkritie group was set in the fall of 2021.

We considered a variety of ideas for filling a sensory room. As a result, they chose a rather complex, but interesting concept, and began to think about how to implement it in practice. The process of working out and planning was long - it took several months. But the approach fully justified itself. told Vladimir Rozin, CEO of the company

The main object of the room was a large screen with unusual proportions - it is ultra-wide. The image on it is formed by two projectors, the picture of which must be properly stitched so that neither breaks nor overlap occur in it. Plus, a surround sound system built so that it feels evenly anywhere in the room (this was achieved thanks to the ceiling placement of speaker systems). Sounds here are transformed into images, and the movements of a person, especially with his hands, into sounds. For example, if a visitor to the room sings or plays a musical instrument, then the color changes on the screen, hand movements generate music, and simple drawings on the tablet turn almost into art canvases on the screen. Another element of the system is "drums," playing which you can get a wide variety of sounds, to which the color design of the screen responds.

The speaker system is designed in such a way as not only to provide a uniform coating throughout the area, but also to obtain surround sound at each point. Also, due to the fact that two walls are occupied by a large canvas of the screen, the third wall has abstract images, and the fourth almost completely consists of windows, the only option was to use body ceiling speakers. Of course, we could not help but use a subwoofer to form a dense sound. Controls the sound of the system and adjusts its digital mixing console. We also wrote our own control system for him. told Mikhail Basyuk, sound and light engineer of the IT group Otkritie

The system for turning movements into sounds and images on the screen is built on a combination of five contactless Kinect touch controllers, which transmit data to a computer with an installed TouchDesigner visual development environment that allows you to create interactive virtual environments (here data from sensors is transformed into visual images).

Diana Gurtskaya Center for Social Integration

During the implementation, some of the natural limitations of Kinect had to be overcome. The fact is that the manufacturer guarantees stable operation of the controllers with a cable length of no more than 2 meters, and in this case it was necessary to lay longer cables - up to 5 meters. And the problems were really not long in coming - there was no stable work. A solution has been found: Kinect's own control scripts have been written that monitor the operation of sensors and reboot them if stability problems are detected. It is also possible to force a reboot of devices, as well as configure them. Thanks to this set of scripts, the final visual picture displays the current state of the sensors, and it is immediately clear whether they work or not.

This technology made it possible to implement a variety of interactive interaction schemes. Visitors especially liked the "scattering of leaflets" that react to the movements of people's hands, scattering to the sides.

Also, the process of "stitching" two projectors for the sake of obtaining a continuous and wide (in two walls with a semicircular transition from one to another) picture turned out to be a difficult technical task. Used projectors Panasonic with lenses with a wide opening angle.

The light falls in a way that highlights all the surface irregularities, and this factor had to be fought. Once the whole process had to start over. But the result was worth the effort. emphasized Vladimir Rozin

A separate issue was the choice of flooring. Many options were also considered here, from a simple carpet to a mirror floor (which was abandoned for the sake of wear resistance and maintainability). However, a simple carpet would be too boring an option, so a fluorescent coating was added to it. Ultraviolet lamps are deployed around the perimeter of the room, revitalizing the floor.

Another important aspect that specialists worked on was the ease of use of the touch room with all its technically complex equipment. For this, an automatic control system was implemented for the entire complex, allows you to optimize management and make it available to a non-specialist. Now, a simple and concise instruction is enough to work with the instrumentation of the room.

The full project implementation period was one year, but most of this period was occupied by the preparatory stage, concept development, 3D model plus subsequent refinement and adjustment. The work on the installation and adjustment of equipment took about 4 months.