THOFU
Thofu Visual
Participants Structure
Project funded by CDTI within the CENIT subprogram, with Project number CEN-20101019 with the support of the Ministry of Economy and Competitivity in 2010.
The project studies the application of new technologies in the hotel environment in order to get advantages for the client and the manager. It covers research in many fields such as construction, energy efficiency, information technology and data access, multimedia content or security.
THOFU is born as a great collaborative and multidisciplinary R&D project in new concepts of tourism, and how these concepts guide the research on technologies and the development of technological concepts to enable an open offer advanced, different and exclusive services, around the hotel.
The project aims to boost the supply of hotel sector through joint research on a new concept of hotel of the future, from the spaces and their construction, through the objects that reside in it, and not forgetting the interaction with guests, as well as the symbiosis with the Internet.
A tourist attraction with which to fight the stagnation of a key sector in Spain, in which many other subsectors depend on and that would become additional beneficiaries.
Given the enormous number of concepts and technologies proposed THOFU is organized into subprojects, each on a set of technologies:
- Scenarios Concepts and Reference Model of the Hotel of the Future: subproject to define reference scenarios and models of the Hotel of the Future and the creation of an observatory of tourism. This sub-project incorporates the results from other subprojects in the definition of reference construction models and information technology for sensitive and dynamic spaces.
- New building techniques and energy efficiency: will investigate the use of new materials and building techniques that improve the generation and accumulation of energy and optimize energy consumption.
- The interior of the Hotel of the Future: pursues research on technologies that facilitate the design of dynamic and sensitive spaces, filled with sensors and networked objects, including sensorized new materials and textiles.
- Intelligent and adaptive interfaces: focused on providing new adaptive and customized interfaces, where virtual reality is mixed with the real world.
- Safety in an intelligent environment: focused on the research on the treatment of large volumes of environmental data safely and optimally. New forms of biometric recognition will be considered to identify users of the hotel will be considered. We will also advance in personalized emergency management in real time.
- Future Hotel connected: where we will advance in user characterization techniques with ICTs. We will investigate how Internet technologies can provide the hotel industry can benefit from innovation led by users to better know their tastes and opinions, and the hotel acts as a hub offering services in the area where it is located, for which we will investigate in service technologies aligned with the future Internet and services, innovating in the use of mashups technologies in the sensorized hotel.
This project studies the application of new technologies in order to be used in hotel infrastructures. This is because it is necessary to improve aspects from management to customer experience, ranging from construction techniques to access content. The CeDInt is involved in two main lines of this project: Improving the energy efficiency and carrying out the sensor network communications.
On the one hand, the research of the improvement of the energy efficiency is related to the implementation of network monitoring and control for electrical charges and the water distribution system of the hotel. The main objective is to optimize the overall energy consumption of the hotel facilities without reducing the comfort of customers.
Also, the introduction of sensor networks and actuators enables the creation of serveral services in different areas like security, customization, data access, heath, etc. These networks require a communication protocol that allows a proper operation and configuration of systems and a good interaction with customers and managers from different interfaces such as smartphones, tablets, touch interfaces, etc.
Project general objectives:
- The project's main objective is to advance in the state of art of a set of emerging building, sensing, information and communications, and interaction technologies, with great potential impact on the tourism sector and in particular in advancing in new concepts of accommodation for travellers. Its ultimate goal is to establish the technologies for the development of a new hotel concept in all its dimensions, allowing, by making attractive and different the offer, address issues of seasonality and loyalty of travellers. The technologies where THOFU focuses present considerable challenges on research and engineering, which in many cases require the active collaboration of researchers from different disciplines.
- The THOFU unifying element is the hotel infrastructure: technology assets result of the project, after the necessary phases of industrialization (which are not the subject of this project), will allow to articulate a new hotel concept. The hotel of the future – increased, sensitive and sustainable- will provide guests with a space capable of adapting to the peculiarities and specific needs of each client (physical situation, cultural characteristics or needs resulting from their state of health or moral needs, for instance), combining new ideas and technologies for the design of spaces with the possibility of permanently increase awareness of the visitor to create offers of advanced services and improve interaction.
- The "hotel" in THOFU, is a highly sensorised environment that enables the acquisition of user data and direct interaction with him. These capabilities make this space can become a "hub" of service provision, the central node of the THOFU architecture, in which external actors can access and use the information collected to generate value propositions, to differentiate the offer. The hotel will be a node on the network of the smart city, will connect with her and will help to enrich it, producing and sharing information. In addition, the hotel of the future will pursue the improvement and sustainability of its installations, from building up to its daily operation.
- Transcending the technologies themselves, THOFU has the ambition to explore "technological concepts" at the frontier of current research and develop new ones. The subprojects organization contemplates those two aspects of research and development of technology and creativity, trying to use the technology enablers in building innovative paradigms.
Objectives of the activity of CeDInt within the project
Water Management System
- Requirements specification, design of the network of sensors and counters and study of intelligent control systems.
- usage scenarios:
- Management Applications
- Billing Control Service
- Breakdown detection Service
- Water Healtiness Control Service
- User Applications
- Control of water consumption Service
User Application ( client and worker profiles) fo the wáter management
Network Power Micromeasurement
- specification requirements, network design and study of data collection systems.
- Proposed solution:
- standards-based Wireless Network: 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, COAP.
- Internet of Things Paradigm.
- low cost sensors and actuators.
- multiplatform, multiprotocol, service-oriented and extensible management software.
- User Applications.
- Demonstrator in CeDInt building with two types of meter own technology:
- batmeter: consumption in electrical panel
- BatPlug: individual measure and control
Intelligent Objects for the custom space
- Design and implementation of techniques for end-user programming for interaction with smart objects: analysis of existing techniques, interaction module design and implementation.
- Definition of new smart objects for communications and access to information.
Technologies:
- Sensor networks
- Control systems
- Home automation systems
Applications:
-
Development of a monitoring and control platform for water distribution systems and electric charges. Modeling smart objects networks to control distributed devices.
News:
- FITUR Interview about the Hotel of the Future: THOFU: https://vimeo.com/18994041
- Project THOFU Kick-off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCBN2TogmTs
- http://www.elmundo.es/mundodinero/2010/10/17/economia/1287314623.html
