Archive

Selected projects by and/or in collaboration with students.

Projects

  1. Pachelbel Digital

    Pachelbel Digital was a student project developed with the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg to present the life and work of the Nuremberg-born Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel. The Android application was conceived for a multimedia station in St. Sebald Church , addressing an international audience. Its concept combined a navigable biographical timeline, interactive maps, musical history, scores, and audiovisual material. The presentation was intended to remain accessible to casual visitors while also offering depth for specialists.

  2. Eternipedia.org

    Eternipedia asked how human knowledge might survive for centuries or millennia rather than depend on fragile digital storage. The interdisciplinary TH Nürnberg project explored preserving text, images, and sound in ceramic media. Teams tested different materials, firing processes, and methods of applying information for durability and legibility. It was supported in part by LEONARDO—Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation .

  3. Doedls

    Doedls was an attempt to introduce evolutionary algorithms and programming through play. It was an artificial-life simulation set on the fictional planet Dudle. Players acted as genetic engineers, designing primitive single-cell organisms through small genomes composed of sensor and action codons. The cells had to obtain energy through photosynthesis, respiration, or interactions with other cells while moving, growing, dividing, and mutating in a changing environment. The cells could be programmed with a simple language inspired by Stanford's Karel, suitable for evolutionary programming.

  4. Distripedia.de

    Distripedia explored decentralized hosting of Wikipedia and a more user-distributed web. Instead of only consuming and creating content, visitors’ browsers would also provide storage and help distribute it. Peer-to-peer delivery was intended to reduce the load on central servers and return control of data to users. Students in International Media and Computing at HTW Berlin designed, implemented, and tested a prototype during their practical semester in 2010.

  5. AOSCAT

    AOSCAT—Another Open Source Code Analysis Tool—was developed to assess the quality of large, evolving software systems containing millions of lines of code. Its language-agnostic architecture supports the analysis of C, C++, Java, and other programming languages. It combined structural information and metrics from tools such as Doxygen and SourceMonitor with configurable checks for potentially critical code. A modular blackboard architecture allowed analysis plugins to exchange XML-based results and feed configurable HTML reports. The prototype offered both a command-line interface and a minimal graphical interface. Its source code and downloadable releases remain available on SourceForge.

  6. KinderUni VibeCoding

    A KinderUni workshop in which children aged ten to twelve create and remix simple browser games with a locally hosted AI coding assistant. The guided, offline format keeps the children in control as designers while introducing coding and the critical use of AI.

  7. Fun with Robots

    A hands-on robotics project for children and young people using simple, low-cost cardboard robots with no more than one or two servos. Building and programming their own creations makes electronics, movement, and autonomous behavior approachable and playful.

  8. ExplorAR

    A student-initiated augmented-reality project that used AI to turn drawings of sea creatures into 3D models, viewable at life size and printable in 3D. Its exhibition at Nuremberg’s Blaue Nacht attracted more than 2,000 visitors.

  9. Experimentor

    An exploration of smartphone-based science experiments and educational activities intended to complement a visit to the Deutsches Museum Nürnberg and continue beyond the museum. It was the basis of the SPhysix.org project.

  10. ComeHome

    A student-initiated smart home project exploring coordinated smart-home components centered around a smart mirror.

  11. Gemeinsames Virtuelles Musizieren

    An investigation of musicians’ needs in digital environments, from community and sharing tools to the technical challenges of playing together online.

  12. RoboCraft

    A multiplayer, Minecraft-inspired environment for learning programming by directing robot helpers to build and collaborate in a shared world.

  13. PhysicsCraft

    A Minecraft-inspired educational environment for learning mathematics and physics by building, simulating, and sharing experiments.

  14. Mycel.org

    A concept for a decentralized, low-bandwidth mobile social network that could continue operating without centralized internet infrastructure by using a peer-to-peer mesh.

  15. Journal für angewandte Informatik

    An open-access, open-peer-review publishing concept for universities of applied sciences, designed for research and concise accounts of notable bachelor’s and master’s theses.

  16. DistriFriends

    A browser-based decentralized social-network concept in which data would be stored among friends instead of on a central server.

  17. Spykee

    An experiment in extending the Spykee toy robot with a small computer to explore speech, recognition, following behavior, stereoscopic vision, and autonomous operation.