Facilities and equipments

Page reviewed:  17/10/2025

Sensola is an infrastructure with equipment that can be used for both in-situ studies and in a controlled indoor environment. The facility thus includes a traditional indoor laboratory with control room and experimental rooms, as well as a set of innovative portable equipment for more flexible use.

In Sensola, research is currently conducted primarily within environmental psychology and landscape architecture.

The indoor laboratory consists of two equivalent experimental rooms and a control room. The experimental rooms contain equipment for immersive audiovisual simulations of outdoor environments with large OLED screens or VR, as well as measurement of psychophysiological responses. Monitoring and analysis take place in the control room.

Sensola indoor laboratory
Indoor laboratory

To develop new and in-depth knowledge about how outdoor environments are experienced on site, smart and portable technology is used, which allows people to interact in a natural way with their surroundings. It is possible to collect both location data (e.g. GPS, accelerometry and video) and physiological responses (e.g. skin conductance, respiratory rate and pulse). Consumer-oriented technology such as heart rate monitors and chest straps enable data collection on a larger scale. The data can then be synchronized, visualized and analyzed in the physical indoor laboratory.

At Sensola, it is possible to study brain activity with fNirs (functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy). fNirs is an optical technology, where we measure activity in different parts of the brain by sending out light in specific wavelengths that are absorbed by blood. By measuring how much light is reflected, we can understand the activity levels in different areas of the brain.

The laboratory has various types of video cameras, both conventional variants, as well as action cameras, spy glasses and smart phones. Action cameras are developed to document outdoor activities, they have high resolution and good image stabilization. Spy glasses look like regular glasses, but have a hidden video camera integrated into the frame. In addition to the video function, smart phones also have the ability to document accelerometry, GPS and can be synchronized with external devices via Bluetooth.

Software for experimental design and analysis:

  • E-prime
  • Acqknowledge
  • Kubios
  • Oxysoft
  • ETVision and ETAnalysis
  • R
Sensola outdoor laboratory
Outdoor laboratory

Examples of equipment

Bionomadix

A basic system in the laboratory is the Biopac Bionomadix combined with the Acqknowledge software. The system consists of a set of portable equipment that records physiological data in real time, such as respiratory rate, pulse, heart rate variability and skin conductance. The data is synchronized, visualized and analyzed in the Acqknowledge software.

Polar H10

The Polar H10 is a consumer-oriented chest strap that is often used in sports to measure heart rate. The Polar H10 can also be used to record ECG from the heart, which provides information about both pulse and heart rate variability. The laboratory has four Polar H10s in two different sizes.

Nuanic

Nuanic is a ring that measures skin conductance. Skin conductance is a good indicator of the body's activation level "arousal". By measuring small changes in skin moisture, we can understand how different environments activate people. In practice, this is often about stress, but since there is both positive and negative activation, the measurements should be supplemented with self-reporting.

Eyetracking and VR

Eyetracking is a technique that makes it possible to understand in detail how test subjects view their surroundings visually, by registering eye movements, fixations and pupil size. There is screen-based eyetracking for indoor studies, as well as mobile eyetrackers for outdoor studies. Eyetracking can also be combined with simulated realities, Virtual Reality VR.

fNirs

At Sensola, it is possible to study brain activity with fNirs (functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy). fNirs is an optical technology, where we measure activity in different parts of the brain by sending out light in specific wavelengths that are absorbed by blood. By measuring how much light is reflected, we can understand how much activity is in different areas of the brain.

Location documentation

The laboratory has various types of video cameras, both conventional variants, action cameras, spy glasses and smart phones. Action cameras are developed to document outdoor activities, they have high resolution and good image stabilization. Spy glasses look like regular glasses, but have a hidden video camera integrated into the frame. In addition to the video function, smart phones also have the ability to document accelerometry, GPS and can be synchronized with external devices via Bluetooth.

Smart phones and tablets

The lab has a set of phones and tablets that, in addition to location documentation with video, can also be used for various tasks such as collecting survey responses, accelerometry, GPS and LIDAR.

Skin Conductance

Skin conductance is one of the most proven and reliable indicators for measuring arousal. Skin conductance can also tell you something about stress level because increased activation in the sympathetic nervous system (flight-fight response) increases sweating. The reverse is also true, i.e. a decrease or return to “baseline” indicates activity in the parasympathetic nervous system (the body’s “resting system”). Skin conductance usually needs to be paired with other data because the increased degree of activation itself can have many explanations.

Pulse

The heart’s working rate, the pulse, is correlated with physical activity level, but also says something about the mental state, where a higher pulse can indicate stress and cognitive load.

Heart rate variability, HRV

Heart rate variability is a measure of the average difference in time between heartbeats. Low heart rate variability is usually linked to activity in the sympathetic nervous system (stress), while higher variability indicates the parasympathetic system (recovery). It is possible to train HRV, which can lead to a better balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and thus also resistance to stress. Heart rate variability can be estimated via pulse (RR) and blood volume pulse (PPG), but the best accuracy is provided by ECG. Heart rate variability can be expressed as standard deviation in R-R.

ECG/EKG

Measurement of the heart's electronic activity over time. Can be used for detailed analysis of, for example, heart rate variability and pulse.

PPG photoplethysmogram

A type of sensor that is based on short light pulses. The body's blood vessels absorb the light signals differently depending on blood volume and oxygen saturation. A PPG sensor sends several light pulses per second, and by measuring how much of the light comes back, a graph of the blood volume pulse is obtained.

Pulse oximetry

A type of PPG sensor that measures the oxygen saturation of the blood. The sensor is usually placed on the finger or earlobe, diodes emit light in wavelengths that are absorbed differently depending on the degree of saturation of the blood.

Respiratory rate

There is a natural relationship between the body's activity level and respiratory rate, in such a way that the respiratory rate decreases at rest. This relationship can also be double-acting.

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