Facilities

In addition to general lab space our Centre hosts a number of unique research facilities.

Audio-Visual Laboratory

Woman holding a board whilst a camera focuses on it

The Centre has created the Audio-Visual Laboratory - a state-of-the-art video and audio capture studio that supports research in real-time video and audio processing and visualisation. It hosts a multi-camera capture suite hosting 16 x 4K broadcast cameras, a mobile machine vision capture system, a 64-camera scanning cage and a Vicon Mocap system. 

 

 

Sound Sphere

Two men adjusting the sound sphere facility equipment

Our Audio-Visual laboratory features the Surrey Sound Sphere, the centrepiece of the cutting edge audio and acoustics research taking place at the University of Surrey. It hosts a reconfigurable array of 64 speakers for producing a variety of immersive soundscapes and an adaptable audio booth for listening experiments.

The Sphere has been used for experiments on personal sound zones (where you hear a completely different piece of audio depending on where you stand), testing human sound localisation (working out what affects your ability to sense where sound is coming from), and as a production environment for object-based 3D audio.

 

 

Computing facilities

Two men looking at a computer screen

Our lab spaces are complemented by our compute clusters with over 180 high end GPUs, 1600 CPU cores, 12TB of RAM and 320TB high performance storage designed for AI workloads. 

Sign language capture suite

Three boxes, one with man, one with AI generated figure, and one with woman, all signing

The Institute is also home to a sign language capture suite; a multi-camera system specifically designed for high quality recording of sign language videos.

 

The Living Lab

A woman leans over her sound system in her living room.

The Living Lab has a living room and studio flat environment for testing ‘In the home’ people-centred AI.

 

Booking

Some facilities may be hired for external use. If you would like to enquire about using one of our facilities then please email the Facilities Manager (cvssp-facilities@surrey.ac.uk) regarding these.

All labs can be booked by our staff and students using the University’s email system.