Full Scale Experiment with Interactive Urban Lighting

This paper presents and discusses the results of a full-scale interactive urban illumination experiment. The experiment investigates how human motion intensities can be used as input for controlling the illumination of a town square in the city of Aalborg in Denmark. The trajectory, velocity and region of occupancy of persons in the town square were monitored in real time by computer vision analyses of thermal images from 3 cameras monitoring the twin square. The results of the computer vision analyses were used to control the illumination from 16 3.5 meter high RGB LED Lamps that were distributed across the square in an irregular grid. The lamps were DMX controlled. Using architectural models as sketching tools, 4 different illumination designs were developed and tested for a week in January. The result shows that in general people immersed in the square did not notice that the light changed according to their presence or actions, whereas people watching from the outside noticed to a larger degree the interaction between the illumination and the immersed persons. We seek to develop new knowledge about the experience of responsive environments and to explore technical, social and aesthetic challenges in the design of responsive lightings in the future; thus creating engaging, inspiring and creative cities whilst simultaneously reducing energy consumption by dimming the lights when no people are around.