What next for the Living Room of the Future (LRotF)?

By Dr Claire Coulton 
PETRAS Project Manager

On 22-23 September, as part of PETRAS’ House Training the Internet of Things (HTIoT) project, PETRAS researchers from Lancaster University provided a unique experience in the form of the Living Room of the Future (LRofTF) for visitors attending the Digital Design Weekend at the V&A in London.

After a highly successful couple of days at the V&A, which saw 22,000 visitors and nearly 100 who experienced the Living Room installation directly, the LRotF team will be taking to the road.

The first stop will be the British Council’s Play Festival in Skopje, Macedonia.  An early version of the project featured film by artists selected after a weekend workshop in Sarajevo that was conducted by project partners, BBC and FACT.  Professor Paul Coulton, LRotF PI, said, “The workshop held in Sarajevo demonstrated that there was a real interest in future media, storytelling and Object-Based Media (OBM) so this is a great opportunity to engage with the artists and film makers who were involved in the early part of the project.”

Following this, the LRotF team, that also includes PETRAS Research Associates Joe Lindley and Adrian Gradinar, will be building a bespoke version as part of the IoT Home demonstrator. This will be going into one of the future homes at BRE.  It is expected that this will form a part of the BRE tours for the general public.

Slotted into their travel schedule, the team are also taking time out for filming.  This week, Paul and Joe were filmed by Reuters for their technology channel to discuss the project, and later in November, the BBC Blue Room team will also be visiting Lancaster to see and film the Living Room of the Future.

Paul Coulton describes in more detail the history of the Living Room of the Future project, and it’s links to BBC R&D in his PETRAS blog, Experiencing the Future of IoT at the V&A https://www.petrashub.org/experiencing-the-future-of-iot-at-the-va/