School Zone LED/Pedestrian Safety/Disappearing

School Zone is a concept crosswalk designed specifically for school zones but has amazing potential for other uses. The system changes several key elements to existing crosswalks promising safety for both pedestrians and drivers.

School Zone comes in a series of elevated slabs to fit any length road. The raised level ensures drivers see children as they cross and also acts as a speed bump forcing them to slow down or risk damaging their vehicles. The elevation also has an added benefit since it meets the exact height of the curb - wheelchairs can cross with ease.

Each slab has a set of illuminated LEDs that work in tandem to direct foot traffic. They time themselves to pre-existing crosswalk signals and turn off one by one indicating time is running out. The system can also run independently if no crosswalk exists.

The prefabricated nature of the system means it can be manufactured to the highest of standards and installed anywhere. You can take it a step further and create temporary crosswalks for special events like concerts and outdoor festivals.

Designer: Seungkyun Woo

Fridays Meeting (Design and Technology)

We met with two professor's of Design and Technology (DT) and walked in on a demonstration. They have a program that is projected onto a floor pad about 12' x 12' ft2. The floor is equipped with infrared lighting and motion sensing cameras. The minicar senses darkness against the white pad and tracks it shape.

We would like to use a similar technology using Computer Vision/ Blob Detection to recognize shapes in the intersection to trigger the interactive crosswalk.

Hopefully we will be able to animate all this in After Effects...

The DT guys also said the fiber optics embedded with LEDs in asphalt is feasible so we will research how this would work.
Andreas, the only critique we had for the curb and arrows idea is that if a cars are parked next to the curb, it won't be seen. As usual, your presentation was very beautiful and you are very skilled with diagramming. We would like to further develop the idea of bathing the pedestrians aproaching the curb with light, perhaps tracking the pedestrians with a spot-light? or tracking them with intense light, like Jenny S's diagram?

Direction we are heading:

-Interactive crosswalks
-Lighting up the pedestrians
-LED's and fiber optics
-Computer Vision/Blob detection

For next week, lets refine these ideas. We have 4 weeks to go and we are surprisingly right on schedule.

Spreadable OLED's

www.engadget.com

1. This could either be spread or "painted" on virtually any surface, leaving an OLED screen that would be just 100nm thick.
2. At would also double as a solar panel that'd keep the OLEDs powered, something that's apparently possible due to the "similar, but opposite, principles" that OLEDs and solar cells work on.
3. Researchers from Sumitomo Chemical and Mitsubishi Chemical are aiming to have usable prototypes ready within the next two years.

DT Contact - Thai Le

I met with Thai Le this week, he is a student in the design technology (DT) department. He seemed very willing to help us out and help answer our questions throughout the project. One of the projects he is working on now is very similar to our project.

Next week Jenny and I will meet with him, he has agreed to show us the DT department and introduce us to a teacher that could also help us. We will also look at the lab they have upstairs.

Image on Another Group's Blog

Pedestrian Recognition - Skype

http://kisd.de/~tobi/sensors/

research

Fiday's Conclusions

Lauren and I went to the materials library and discussed with Heather some really interesting light embedding ideas. She suggested using fiber optics, because it is really efficient in channeling light sources and together with LEDS, they would be even more so efficient.

Fiber optic bundles can be threaded into asphault emitting light from an LED source, emitting minimal heat and lasts for a really long time.

It is possible to come up with an interactive computer interface that responds to external stimulation that translates to lighting. I took a digital architecture course last semester that dealt with this kind of relationship so I know it can be done... although I don't know if I could come up with the code that would drive such a device.

Some questions we haven't answered are how are the lights sensored? It should be solar powered? How do we configure the graphics? What colors do we use?

Philips Lumalive/Philips Interactive Lights/Philips Living Colors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEpwZgg1uxo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfIgdIgXDk&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd99gyE4jCk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxc0AAElJTU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Cz144-qyQ&feature=related

Projection System

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgrGjJUBF_I

A demonstration video of a technique used to automatically discover the locations of surfaces in the projection area using embedded light sensors.

Project by: Johnny Chung Lee - Carnegie Mellon University, 2003.

Project for: Mitsubishi Electronic Research Labs

solor embedded lights

Solar Cynergy’s new line of solar LED lights is an eco-friendly, reliable and smart alternative to traditional street lights and home garden lights. Run entirely on solar energy, there’s no battery or complicated wiring involved, simply place the unit in a sunlit area and you can use the sun’s rays to light up anything from your front yard and drive way to dangerous intersections and crosswalks



The solar unit charges during the day and turns on automatically at dusk. A single day of weak sunlight is enough to provide lighting for several days. The lights come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors for residential, commercial and city applications. The lights are weather resilient (working conditions –4 to 158º F), durable enough to be driven on and if that’s not enough, they come with a 10-year warranty and an expected lifetime of 25+ years.
A six-pack of round halogen white lights retails for $699.99 on SmartHome.com
$699.99 from SmartHome

check out their webpage: http://www.solarcynergy.com/Solar-LED-Lights-Products.html

Light (cement) ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3lZhFk-3tQ

I need to research this material a bit more, It does not look structurally sound.

Skype Meeting Conclusions (Oct 20th)

Jenni, Tobi, Andreas - research pedestrian recognition (translation to car) technology

Lauren, Jenny - research lighting materials and technology

Disney - The Future of Driving

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jZtwRJnRs

fun video worth taking a look at.

ACTUAL Pedestrian Flow

Actual Pedestrian Flow - represented in red.

Please study this diagram. It is very important to the problem we are trying to solve.

Added/Possible Situations of Danger

Initial Results: Field Study Cologne


- Missing sidewalks














- Pedestrian is too close to other vehicels















- Crossing against the red light














+ cars














- Abundance of stimuli (Reizüberfluss)















- Limited visability by pillars, lanterns or shields














- Most important: crossing cars during the green light period

Drivers - Analysis

Please add any comments.
"what to consider when designing"

Pedestrians - Analysis

Please add any comments.
"what we should consider when designing"

WallFX - Keep Pedestrians on Sidewalks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obQ7m793iMI

WallFX is a revolution in public space wall advertising and entertainment. It’s digital wall technology that delivers eye-catching dynamic visual content can be projected onto virtually any surface, creating a full body interactive wall experience that allows users to control interactive wall special effects, advertising or games with simple hand and body motions.

GestureTek’s patented video gesture control software for dynamic wall displays tracks and responds to the subtlest of body movements, allowing for real-time interaction between the user and the display, and turning any vertical surface into an exciting interactive wall projection and visual display system.

Videowalls are ideal in malls, arenas, tourist attractions and other public spaces. WallFX is a captivating tool for wall advertising and wall entertainment that will mesmerize users of all ages.

Could we use this to keep pedestrians on sidewalks?

LED Signs

Virtual Wall

Virtual Wall could protect pedestrians with plasma lasers.

We expected that the first practical application for plasma laser technology would be a death ray gun, but Hanyoung Lee had another thought. He designed what's called the Virtual Wall using plasma lasers to make it safer for legal jay walkers to cross the street. The system displays a giant virtual wall right where the crosswalk begins and displays images of people walking to get the point across to pointy-headed drivers. We're all for getting drivers to stop before the white line at a red light so their front bumpers don't bogart the walking path, but we imagine municipalities might have a hard time stomaching the cost of four plasma laser walls at every intersection. We'd like to see a working Virtual Wall do its thing, as all we've got are these renderings below that show what the wall would look like if it were real. We've seen renderings of death ray guns too, however, and still don't have one in our hands.

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/24/virtual-wall-could-protect-pedestrians-with-plasma-lasers/