The former district heating plant in Zurich serves as ETH's new Student Project House. Here, students are working on self-sufficient houses, smart canes for the blind and augmented reality applications, among other things, without the pressure of grades.
ETH Zurich recently unveiled its second Student Project House, where students can realise their project ideas. Workshops and workstations as well as two dozen 3D printers are available to them on five floors.
Developments include a self-managing and electrically self-sufficient house that can be temporarily rented using digital cryptocurrency, a smart cane for the blind that shows users the way around an obstacle and a wearable device for measuring the health of soil in fields.
Augmented reality glasses for service technicians are also among the projects. These show the wearer the work steps to be carried out on a device to be serviced in real time using a three-dimensional model. This means that technicians will no longer have to be sent on long international journeys in future. It should be enough to send a pair of glasses in which the work steps are memorised.
Interdisciplinary skills take centre stage
"We are focussing on interdisciplinary skills here," said ETH Rector Sarah Springman. In the future, students will be required to be very flexible in the labour market. "They will have to reinvent themselves every five to ten years." The Student Project House should help them to try out new things and also to fail - far away from the pressure of grades. "The students should also learn to be courageous and try things out, and not just think about a project for a year," said Lucie Reyman, Head of the Student Project House.
Source: heise
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