Hybrid teaching with camera tracking – Shure MXA910 at Kühne Logistics University

Customer Profile

Since its founding in 2003, the private educational institution Kühne Logistics University (KLU) has offered students the opportunity to complete a state-recognised degrees in logistics and business management. The school's sponsor, which is located in Hamburg's Hafencity district, is Kühne Logistics University GmbH. Due to the coronavirius pandemic, KLU was looking for a hybrid solution that would allow all students to actively participate in lectures while complying with the mandatory protective measures.

Challenge

To realize this goal, several seminar rooms and lecture halls at KLU needed an expansion of the existing conference technology. The new system needed to be able to adapt to the conditions of the existing premises and enable all participants – whether on site or at home – to fully follow the teaching events. It also had to fit into the existing technical infrastructure.

Kühne Logistics University worked together with SIGMA System Audio-Visuell GmbH for the implementation.

Solution

Shure Microflex Advance MXA910 ceiling microphone arrays were installed in all rooms for speech capture. To enable participants attending the lecture from outside to follow what is happening in the lecture hall – both the professor's spoken word and the questions and statements of their fellow students – the microphones transmit the signal to the video conferencing system via audio DSP. In addition, the microphones located above the students direct the signals via audio DSP to a Crestron media control system. The system then evaluates the position of the person speaking and simultaneously calls up the appropriate preset of a Panasonic PTZ camera. This enables all remote participants to see who is speaking based on the camera image.

Advantages

The combination of precise voice pickup and camera tracking of this hybrid conferencing system will allow students to follow their lessons online from start to finish without any restrictions – no matter where they are.

The MXA910 ceiling microphone arrays also blend visually unobtrusively into the university spaces and were installed in a very short time to avoid interruptions to classes.

"This system enables Kühne Logistics University to offer the ideal hybrid teaching environment. Students in the lecture hall are tracked and recorded when they speak, so their fellow students who are attending the lecture online at home can follow what is happening in the lecture hall perfectly," explains Dipl. Ing. Christian Backes from SIGMA System Audio-Visuell GmbH.

Gear List

	Model Number	Quantity	Description
	MXA910	13	The new MXA910 with IntelliMix® represents the next evolution in the Microflex® Advance™ Ceiling Array Microphone platform.
	QLX-D	6	Digital wireless system combines robust wireless performance with easy set-up and digital audio quality.