Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LUMENTILE (LUMinous ElectroNic TILE)

Teaser

LUMENTILE is a three-year, 3€ million Project funded by the EC under the Horizon 2020 program, focused on developing a new construction element to be used by designers and architects: a ceramic electronic and luminous interactive tile, called LUMENTILE. A LUMENTILE is made...

Summary

LUMENTILE is a three-year, 3€ million Project funded by the EC under the Horizon 2020 program, focused on developing a new construction element to be used by designers and architects: a ceramic electronic and luminous interactive tile, called LUMENTILE. A LUMENTILE is made of ceramic with embedded electronic circuits and semiconductor high-efficiency LED light sources of the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) type, and has the capability of changing color at the will of the user.
Three different products have been developed in LUMENTILE.
The FLOOR and WALL LUMENTILE tiles can be installed using a standard process. They can be deployed in private houses, public spaces, indoors or outdoors, for architectural design. The FLOOR tiles are equipped with embedded pressure sensors, that can detect people walking onto the tiles. WALL tiles integrate gesture sensors, that can sense the presence and movement of the hands of the users.
The third product model is a VIDEO tile, intended for the realization of giant video screens to be built in a permanent stand-alone solution. For example, tiles with 30cm x 30cm size, with 16 independent pixels of 7.5cm x 7.5cm size can make a video of 60m x 48m size, with 0.5Mpixel resolution.

Work performed

\"Specifications
The technical and engineering specifications for the LUMENTILE products have been defined by taking into account the needs of the end-users and of interior designers or architects, that will use and install the LUMENTILE solution.
Characteristics of the LUMENTILE products that may be appreciated by architects the interior designers are: flexibility, modularity, customizable..

THE LUMINOUS TILE

The LAYERS

Top Layer
The top layer is the element of the LUENTILE that is in contact with the outer world (and possibly harsh environment, i.e., direct sunlight, rain, freezing, pressure, mechanical shocks) and the users. Different materials have been considered: translucent ceramic, glass and polycarbonate have been selected as potential materials. Research and development started from the laboratory.

Bottom Layer
The bottom ceramic layer has the goal of giving mechanical strength to the tile and of embedding the driving and control electronic circuits.


The ELECTRONIC and OPTICAL HARDWARE (Intermediate, \"\"smart\"\" layer)

The electronic \"\"smart\"\" core of the LUMENTILE includes large-area electronic circuits and high brightness discrete LEDs, of red, green and blue color, that are capable of generating any possible color. The electronic layer also includes the sensors fro detecting people walking onto the tiles (for floor applications) and detecting users\' gesture (for wall tiles).
The point-like light emission of the numerous, tiny RGB LEDs is transformed into a uniformly distributed light emission over the whole top surface of the tiles by means of suitably designed and manufactured light-guiding and light-diffusing layers.
For the VIDEO tiles, a new technology has been used to print the large-area electronic circuits for the RGB LEDs directly on a low-cost and flexible substrate such as PET (i.e., the same material that makes plastic bottles and acetate slides for overhead projectors).


The SOFTWARE

The developed software is classified as firmware and application software. The firmware runs on the micro-controllers equipping each tile, while the application software runs on an external control station that configures, coordinates and controls the set of tiles.

The LUMENTILE APP
A user-friendly Android App has been developed, with the goal of exchanging data with the wall/floor tile cover. It can be used to change the appearance and color of the installation, and to show in real-time traces of the different people walking onto the tiles.


OUTSIDE THE LUMINOUS TILE: THE CONNECTILE SYSTEM

The tiles are installed by placing them into a suitably designed plastic holder/socket, called the ConnecTile, each hosting and keeping into place four corners of four adjacent tiles. The ConnecTile not only provides mechanical stability to the floor/wall cover, but it also has embedded electrical contacts that are used to bring to each tile the electrical power, and to allow the tile communicate digital data between each other (for example: information about the color configuration of each tile, or deta collected by the sensors embedded into the tiles).

Communication and Dissemination

Information on LUMENTILE and media materials can be found at:
www.lumentile-project.eu

LUMENTILE accounts have been created on social channels:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lumentileeu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumentile-project/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lumentile/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumentile

One of the most significant achievement has been the creation of practical demonstrators, showcased at fairs and trade-show, like the prestigious CES 2018 (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas.

LUMENTILE demonstrators have been showcased in Milan during the Fuorisalone Design Week in April 2018,
A LUMENTILE interactive wall representing a giant Tetris video game has been installed in Milano Lambrate design district.
A LUMENTILE floor installation was showcased in the central Piazza Castello in Milan\"

Final results

Progress beyond the state-of-the-art has been achieved in the majority of the research areas targeted by LUMENTILE Main progress beyond the state-of-the-art are listed below.

• Translucent ceramic top layer
• Large-area electronics for the smart control of LEDs and sensors
• Embedded sensors for pressure (walking) and gesture detection
• Mechanical and electrical connection system for the LUMENTILE tiles
• Software and firmware for the management and control of the network of smart, luminous and sensorized tiles
• Solution for creating a uniform illumination on the top of the tiles, starting from point-like LED emitters.
• New products: LDR Colour WALL, LDR Colour FLOOR, HDR Video tiles..
• New applications, ranging from interior design to public spaces, in the context of smart-city development. In this respect, the LUMENTILE Consortium will strongly push the applications that are visually described in the virtual reality video, namely: airports (with LDR FLOOR for interactive guidance and security, and LDR WALL for the creation of ambience and atmosphere), and retail (for brand recognition and innovation perception).

Website & more info

More info: https://www.lumentile-project.eu/.