Quantum stuff with great sound - 13/05/2016
This day would prove to be one of the bussiest of our study tour with three company visits (UCSB, Google and Sonos) and the cantus. We were told to have all of our gear with us for the whole day, we would not return to the hostel any time soon. So after a limited amount of sleep we woke up at seven to have early breakfast at IHOP.
At Google we got a nice presentation by senior hardware engineer Erik Lucero, he gave an introduction on Googles efforts to produce a useful quantum computer. The A.I. Laboratory research group in Santa Barbara works solely for the purpose of creating a quantum computing data centre. After a lab tour of 10 minutes we took the car to the University.
The UCSB professor, Kimberly Turner, gave a tour through her MEMS lab and the University campus. Very interesting Gecko inspired adhesive materials are developed there along with high Q resonators. The stroopwafels were given and we moved on towards Santa Barbara for the Sonos visit.
At two we went inside to see some remarkable audio surround systems. Sonos has a lot of playrooms where setups are tested in a real living environment. They also have systems based on wifi and to test these systems they have a nice anechoic chamber, where it was very tight with groups of three. To finish the company visits we had a Q&A sessions. At half past three we were on the boardwalk again.
We had quite some time before the start of the Cantus in which many of us discovered the city of Santa Barbara. After this the Cantus was a very good place to have a drink and a lot of fun. Many were pointed at us when singing songs and drinking beer.
By: Leon Schenk