Conclusions - Meeting on Friday with Lyn & the Class

We presented two concepts today to the class. The first idea was the animation we agreed on and looked at during Monday's Skype meeting. The second concept was created as an addition to the first concept. I have posted the to the blog in in three parts listed as Phase A, B, and C of Phase 3. The class and Lyn agreed that this strengthened our concept as a whole.

Lyn further recommended that we shorten the first phase, and replace the third phase with concept 2.

We propose as a finial concept…

• Combining idea one and two
• Blinking street lights – cutting down on length
• Replacing the third phase with concept 2
• Linking cars turn signal to intelligent intersection
• Energy – solar power Lights - LED Tiles
• Detection – blob detection

What next…

• Look back grab necessary information for presentation
• Refine our problem and such, terminology Phases, etc
• Refine our program – figure out method to defend our idea
• Create new diagram to explain tiles
• Final Animation that includes traffic signals and more pedestrians, cars, etc

Friday Meeting

The next class meeting will be Sunday in which we should have a nearly finalized idea to share with the class. After considering Andy's comments on our current progress we have decided to add a windshield component to the "intelligent intersection" system that is underway. We now need to refine how these two components work together, suggesting that we work with Flux's group.

Lauren and Jenny will research further blob-detection and the materiality of this project.

Tobi, the new diagram is really insightful and suggested some really great ideas. We are thinking to do away with the zebra stripes as your diagram suggests and reduce the signage to single lines. Also, is it possible to light up the pedestrian as he or she crosses?

We will discuss everything further Monday.

Fiber Optic Sources

Bellow are company sites that Lyn sent us, they are dealing with fiber optics. Jenny and I will look at these sites on Friday in class, and try to purchase some materials to begin working with. We will also be meeting with Thai today.

the Fiber Optic Store
thefiberopticstore.com
Supplier of clear fiber optic filaments in spools.

Oakridge Hobbies
oakridgehobbies.com
Excellent resource for clear and fluorescent fiber optics, acrylic sheets
and rods.

Plastecs company
plastecs.com
Retailer of inexpensive fiber optics and fiber optic kits.

Feedback for Tobi

The entire class was impressed with your motion graphic capability and it really expressed the points we were trying to emphasize with the anticipation and warning for the driver. We especially like the idea of the street lamps intensifying when pedestrians approach and are on the curb. Although the bright red warning lights can be a little confusing. What happens when people are on all 4 points of the intersection. Does the whole intersection become a flashing juncture? Perhaps the warning light can be applied to only one side of the intersection... notify right-turning cars only.

Also, the pedestrian tracking lights, would they be embedded in the road? Or applied to the curb? It might not be a good idea to apply this to the road, it may imply another lane, and could be confusing. We think you have the best way of communicate the dynamics of the intersection so far, perhaps we can now add in really specific scenarios. We could add traffic signals and cross walks. We can discuss this on Monday.

Lynn really like our idea of embedded LEDs so perhaps we can still integrate this in or final concept. Perhaps the tracking lights are embedded... and the crosswalks? In anycase, we have lots to talk about which is good. Great interactive diagram!

Talk to you Monday. Jenny S, we didnt get a chance to discuss yours yet because we communicated with Lynn through skype and didn't see your posting until afterwards. But we will look at it next.

Optional Meetings on Friday

BIG SKYPE MEETING!!! October 24!
Hey guys, please email this to your KISD students about having an all inclusive skype meeting next Friday during class. Also, don't forget to do a short writup about your topic and posting it on the main blog for everyone. We should all communicate throughout this week about what the German students think about time.

-Monica


Dear KISD students,

Recently we have come to understand that this project is of different levels of importance for the Parsons students compared to the KISD students. While this is our core class and we have a lot of expectations and guidance from Lyn we know that KISD is bascically on their own as you no longer meet with Wolfgang.

We have found that it has been extremely helpful when we meet once a week with the entire class to see what everyone is doing. Last week we narrowed down everyones topics to prevent overlap and complete a system.

In order to bring KiSD up to the same level of understanding with everyones projects we would like to have a skype meeting next Friday during our class from 12-4 with anyone in the KISD class who would like to discuss everything. We think this would be very helpful for understanding everything going on in this project. Let your Parsons group members know when a good time would be for anyone wanting to participate.

Feedback

Tobi: Bathing the pedestrians at the curb is a good idea. Your image of the person stepping on the panels that light up suggests interactivity with the lighting the sidewalk is also great.

Andreas: We agree that the driver needs to be alerted as to where the pedestrians are in an oncoming intersection and perhaps we can integrate this idea in the design. Tracking the pedestrians on to the windshield is being explored in Flux's group so we are hesitant to go in that direction. We would like to retain the idea of tracking the pedestrians.

Jenni: Encasing the pedestrian in a bubble of light is great for increasing the visibility of the pedestrians, especially at night. The materiality that your concept suggests is really interesting. It would need some kind of embedded lighting that we could look into.

Lauren: The mapping of the pedestrian's zones vs the drivers zone gave us an interesting perspective of the intersection. It expands the territory of the pedestrians and shows it goes beyond the existing parameters. It also brings up the question whether the existing zones are good enough for the actual behavior of the pedestrians crossing. Lighting up these pedestrian zones is a good way to alert the drivers where pedestrians will cross.

Jenny: The idea of making the crosswalks interactive and changing according to what is going on in the intersection is good. The class felt it integrates everyone's idea so far and is cohesive with the other groups designs. We felt that this might be an good direction to go because it poses exploration into new lighting materials, such as imbedded fiber optics, translucsent concrete, and light defracting color pigments and resonance with light diffusing pigments. It also refers back to everybody's design proposals so far.


Lyn and the class were enthusiastic about the idea of interactive crosswalks. How do you guys feel about this? It incorporates alot of our ideas so far. If you do then we can start designing how this would work. Lauren and Jenny can go to the materials library and start thinking about how this could be applied.

Feedback - Concept Round 1

Tobi: As a class we found the presentation to be very cool. We liked your idea of using the sidewalk to alert pedestrians of the car's intention and the use of moving lights. Someone made the comment that cars could be parked where the light was moving along the curb and problematic because of the cost of something like to line every street may not be feasible.

Andreas: The idea of the light coming from the headlights was good because Lyn liked the idea of lighting up the pedestrians in the path of oncoming cars.

Jenny S: The windshield screen idea was great, but another group is exploring using flexible oled stickers on the windshield (see flux's group). We really liked the idea of lighting up the street zones with the solar powered light.

Lauren: It was great to activate the corners with the advertisements and making them interactive, we think it that defining these pedestrian zones might be a good direction to go. Lyn felt that the advertisements might add to the distraction that pedestrians already have.

Jenny: We felt that adding responsibility to the pedestrian is a good idea but perhaps giving them more information, like how fast a car is going wouldn't neccessarily make the pedestrians more aware. The light sticks could be stolen. It would be hard to regulate something like that.

We found that our group was very similar to Rob's group so in order to diverge from them and still stick with accidents in an urban intersection, we proposed we work with the existing infrastructure and use lighting to manipulate that to facilitate communication within the intersection. Rob's group will take the angle of manipulating a signaling system to increase communication of the pedestrians and drivers. Everyone was enthusiastic about the idea of redesigning the crosswalk, sidewalks, markings, zones... the structure of intersections.

We tightened our problem and specified more factors. Lyn mentioned that our designs from here on out should correlate very closely to them. Please take a look at the list below before moving forward and add anything you think we might have missed.

Oct 9th - Lyn's E-mail

Parsons & KISD team,

It appears that your concept is established. A couple interesting concepts coming along. I still want to see a list of specific factors that are affecting your problem. Be SPECIFIC as it will help you to better solve the problem.

See you on Friday,
Lyn