since about a year, the hci group offices have an automatic door for accessibility reasons. we have already installed a little bluetooth actuator that can press the button on command. also, there is a key switch to change the door from automatically closing after a few seconds to staying open.
from our day-to-day practice, we find that this setup creates a number of problems. eg. when you have a seminar, you want the door to stay open for the students to arrive, but when the seminar has started, the door needs to be closed again. usually, the lecturer forgets to close the door, which means it stays open, creating a nuisance in the hallway (it is a large door) and a security problem for us. a good solution for this problem would be if the door could see calendar entries and stay open and closed according to some simple rules, eg. 15 mins before and after a seminar starts.
the goal of this bachelor or master thesis project is to create an automation framework that allows us to experiment with such automations. this could eg. be a raspberry computer connected to some actuators, that can easily be accessed from within our network and told to eg. open the door (when the doorbell rings) or switch status. the project starts with user research within the hci group to find out what kinds of automations can be envisioned, and work from there to create a stable working prototype that can then be evaluated.