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London researchers develop plant-powered camera system for conservation efforts

19 Oct

ZSL London Zoo has detailed the results of a new scientific trial that successfully powered a tiny camera using plants. At the core of the system are microbial fuel cells designed to harness the energy produced by bacteria in the soil, which works to breakdown biomatter produced by plants. The end result, according to ZSL, may one day be plant-powered cameras that can be used as part of conservation efforts.

The microbial fuel cells were installed in the London Zoo’s Rainforest Life exhibit for use with a maidenhair fern named Pete. Unlike batteries, which need to be regularly recharged using sunlight or an external power source, plant-based fuel cells can be used to power many low-energy sensors, cameras, and other devices in a variety of environments.

‘We’ve quite literally plugged into nature to help protect the world’s wildlife: Pete has surpassed our expectations and is currently taking a photo every 20 seconds,’ said ZSL Conservation Technology Specialist Al Davies. ‘He’s been working so well we’ve even accidentally photobombed him a few times!’ Below are a few photos captured with the system:

By utilizing this technology, conservationists may be able to monitor plant growth, temperature, and other data using remote hardware without relying on solar panels and batteries. Following additional refinement, the team plans to test the technology in the wild.

Image credits: Photos shared with kind permission from ZSL London Zoo.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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This 7.3-gigapixel panorama ‘timelapse’ of London is made from 6,240 D850 pictures

18 May

Photographer Henry Stuart has created a 24-hour panoramic timelapse image of London that combines 6,240 raw photographs to form a picture that contains over 7 billion pixels.

Captured through a Nikon D850 and AF-S Nikkor 300mm F2.8 lens using a robotic mount by Nikon-owned robotics company Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), the 155° view presents the city in an incredible amount of detail, with Nikon claiming that you can read signs up to 5 miles away from where the image was captured.

The full frame

A fully zoomed-in frame from the center of the picture above

The Twenty Four Hour London project was taken on by Visualise—a company of virtual reality filmmakers—in partnership with Nikon UK and MRMC. The camera was supported and moved by MRMC’s Ulti-Head robotic camera mount, which allowed Stuart to repeat the exact shooting position—to pixel level, according to the release —for 260 shots per hour over the course of the 24-hour sequence.

Once processed and stitched together, the resulting image allows viewers to pick the time of day and to zoom into the image to see the details of distant buildings—and even people relaxing inside their apartments!

The concept was a commission for Lenstore, a UK vision-care company, to promote eye health. To see the full 7 gigapixel ‘timelapse’ for yourself, and explore London in all its glory, head over to the 24 Hour London website.

Press Release

World’s first 24-hour Gigapixel time-lapse panorama, captured with the Nikon D850 and MRMC’s robotic Ulti-Head

24 Hour London is a unique collaboration between Lenstore, Nikon, Visualise and the Nikon-owned robotics company MRMC. Together they have created the biggest ever time-lapse of London’s skyline, taken from the roof of Canary Wharf’s One Canada Square.

In total, over 6,240 photos were taken across a 155-degree view over 24 hours, and subsequently stitched together to create an incredibly detailed panorama, and the first gigapixel timelapse of London. This level of detail was achieved by combining a Nikon D850 and AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8 lens with MRMC’s robotic Ulti-Head to precisely repeat the same pattern of detailed photos 260 times an hour for 24 hours. The finished product allows you to see London change colours across the hours, from sunrise to sunset, with all the shades the capital has to offer in between.

Commenting on the collaboration, Jeremy Gilbert, Marketing Director for Nikon Northern Europe said:

We’re thrilled to be involved with this unique project. The Nikon D850 captured London in incredible detail in challenging conditions. Finding the best combination of camera, lens and precise motion-control was essential for this project and we are proud to have been integral to its success.

The project was shot by Henry Stuart from Visualise, he had the following to say:

Shooting gigapixel photos is hard – we have been shooting them for the Olympics, the World Cup, for events and places all around the globe. Each panorama is so large it needs specially built computers to process it. In this case, we had to build a special server system and network all of the workstations in our studio to the content so that we could stitch five of the photos at a time.

To capture a photo like this you need a really capable camera – we used the Nikon D850. It has this beautiful big sensor and captures a huge range of light and dark (large dynamic range). This is so important when shooting panoramas where one part of the image is bright, such as towards the sun, and another is dark such as over the Thames. We shot everything on the camera’s ‘RAW’ setting, which keeps loads of extra information in the shots that you would usually lose.

The 24 Hour London ‘Gigalapse’

The image is 7.3 Gigapixels (7,300 Megapixels or 7bn pixels), which is over 1000x more powerful than the camera on an iPhone X.
The Nikon D850 and Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8 lens combination delivered phenomenal detail – you can even read signs which are up to 5 miles away in the photo!
The robotic motion control technology using the MRMC Ulti-Head used to create the pinpoint accuracy of images, leading to every single pixel of every point in the panorama being the exact same position as the photos 24 hours earlier.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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This animation shows the chaos a drone caused at a London airport

03 Nov

The sequence of diversions and re-routing caused when a drone was sighted close to one of London’s busiest airports has been turned into an amazing animated map by the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS), to demonstrate the level of disruption even short airport closures can create.

The video map shows what happens to normal air traffic at Gatwick airport when the runway was closed in response to a drone in the vicinity. The closure lasted only nine minutes, but in that time two holding areas away from the airport became congested and some aircraft had to divert to alternative airports over fuel concerns.

The incident happened on a Sunday during the summer when the airport was particularly busy with summer holiday traffic. A drone was spotted close to the runway, but seemed to disappear before returning when the runway reopened, causing it to be closed again for another five minutes. In total, the runway was only closed for 14 minutes, but the level of disruption is easy to see on the map as aircraft circle and shift into safer holding areas with other planes waiting to use the airport.

In all, four holding areas had to be used, and four planes needed to land at different airports because it wasn’t clear how long the closure would last.

“The disruption was significant and took hours to clear; it was around midnight before everything was fully ‘back to normal’ and even then, hundreds of passengers had ended up away from their intended airport and thousands of passengers had been delayed,” reports the NATS blog. “All as a result of one drone pilot flouting the rules. “

NATS encourages all drone pilots to read the Civil Aviation Authorities’ Drone Code and to download the Drone Assist app to ensure they fly safely.

You can find out more about the incident and air traffic control on the NATS website.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Splitting Bricks: Architectural Art Installation Tears a London Building Apart

10 Aug

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

A London building appears to have fallen victim to an earthquake tremor or foundation collapse, with a jagged section of its brick facade split in half and threatening to collapse altogether. But the deteriorating appearance of this otherwise pristine structure isn’t quite what it seems. Artist Alex Chinneck used 4,000 bricks to create the effect of a ripped piece of paper to create ’Six Pins and a Half Dozen Needles,’ a nearly 66-foot tall sculpture outside a mixed-use complex known as Assembly London.

With the paper reference, the artist pays tribute to the site’s former life as home to the publishing company Hammersmith. Chinneck says he spent months scanning torn sheets of paper to find just the right pleasing edge for the split. The sculpture blends into the main building behind it, partially obscuring a few windows, and its elevated position makes it a real eye-catcher. It’s two bricks deep, and took 14 months to complete, with the help of structural engineers, steelworkers and brick makers. Its stainless steel framework is bolted and welded to the building behind it.

Chinneck previously dropped jaws and raised eyebrows in London with two particularly dramatic installations: an upside-down car clinging to a curling piece of pavement outside the Southbank Centre, and a brick facade sliding off the front of a building in Kent. Unlike these previous works, however, ‘Six Pins’ is permanent.

“The work was onceived to engage people in a fun and uplifting way,” says Chinneck. “Although we use real brick, it was designed with a cartoon-like quality to give the sculpture an endearing artifice and playful personality. I set out to create accessible artworks and I sincerely hope this becomes a popular landmark for London and positive experience for Londoners.”

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Bright Idea: London Street Lights Converted to Electric Vehicle Charging Points

24 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

It sounded kind of far away when announced in 2013, but German renewable energy firm Ubitricity’s plan to convert street lamps to electric vehicle chargers is now underway in London, making it easy to plug in just about anywhere in the Hounslow borough of the city. Owners of electric vehicles simply order a custom charging cable featuring a built-in electricity meter so they can take advantage of the discreet power outlets built right into the lamp posts as well as standard electrical outlets.

You might be wondering what’s to stop random passersby from plugging whatever they feel like into the outlets. The answer is that little box, which communicates with the power company to activate charging from the light pole. The lights themselves were converted to LEDs to draw less power, making more available for other purposes.

The meter allows for remote billing, monitoring your usage and reimbursing the person or company the outlet belongs to, making it easier (and more polite) to juice up your vehicle whenever and wherever needed. You can keep track of how much power you’re drawing, and how much it costs, on a smartphone app. Ubitricity believes this setup will give potential electric car owners more confidence in their ability to take their vehicles on the road for longer trips.

The integration with existing city infrastructure also makes sense, especially in areas where there’s no room for permanent charging stations. The lamp posts are already there, and there’s already power running through them, so adding an outlet makes it possible to simply pull over to the side of the road to charge. Electric car owners in the area can request that outlets are added to lamp posts near their homes.

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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Zaha Hadid’s Legacy: Proposal for London by the Architect’s Final Students

11 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

bishopsgate-proposal-2

The legacy of famed architect Zaha Hadid continues to unfold months after her death at age 65 as a long list of her final projects continue in various stages of development, from those currently under construction to concepts that may forever remain unbuilt. But even putting aside the many outstanding and unrealized designs remaining on her firm’s docket, Hadid’s influence on modern architecture lives on through the work of her students at the Yale School of Architecture.

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During their semester-long project at Zaha Hadid’s final studio course, a group of students envisioned a striking new development for London’s Bishopsgate Goodsyard, a flowing white complex in the architect’s signature biomimetic style. Consisting of a high-density residential tower, a mid-rise block and a train station acting as a bridge between the two, the proposal adds some height and visual interest to the largest undeveloped piece of land remaining in central London.

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Lisa Albaugh, Benjamin Bourgoin, Jamie Edindjiklian, Roberto Jenkins and Justin Oh present a futuristic network of gleaming white structures with a skeletal appearance, as if someone took the carcass of some extinct megabeast and reassembled it into a deconstructed approximation of a Gothic cathedral. The spaces between the rib-like columns are filled in with wavy walls of glass decorated with veinous ribbons of gold.

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Viaducts at the base act as access points to a series of public spaces, including a park landscape, connecting the various functions within the complex. All of the different elements that would normally be contained within a traditional tower core are instead spread into individual ‘strands,’ like the elevators, stairs and mechanical systems, freeing up the tower’s center for unusual cross-views out of all that glass.

bishopsgate-proposal-6

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It would seem that the proposal is pure fantasy, given that the developers of the site, Hammerson and Ballymore, have already produced their own proposal. But Londoners have made it clear that they aren’t too keen on that design, with over 11,000 residents signing a petition against it. Critics argue that the developers’ proposal “would result in unacceptable and avoidable significant negative impacts” to the neighborhood.

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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Rolling Landscape: Driverless Geodesic Garden Hits the Streets of London

10 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

geodesic-mobile-garden

As robotic cars take to the streets, designers are beginning to see possibilities for urban mobility that go beyond human and cargo transport. What if plants, for instance, could be moved around automatically, seeking out sun, filtering dirty air and providing fresh greens within cities?

Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, the Interactive Architecture Lab at the University College London has designed and built Hortum Machina B (the last letter short for Bucky).

rolling-garden

An aluminum core houses the technology’s robotics, monitoring plants on the periphery and changing rotation and position to accommodate their needs. On-board water storage supplies moisture for growth while the ball stays in motion.

garden-sphere

This novel mobile ecosystem is solar-powered, so its search for sunlight fuels not only the plants on board but the system itself. With efficient water reclamation, the garden could stay on the move indefinitely.

garden-module-prototype-plan

The internal computer system not only keeps the plants healthy but serve as part of a larger set of smart-city initiatives. For instance, sensors can detect and seek out areas with poor air quality, letting the plants provide filtration on demand.

urban-farm-rolling

The sphere could also roll itself through urban food deserts, allowing people to pick edibles as it winds its way through a city. Of course, this shape may not be the most efficient manifestation of the idea, but as a conceptual model could inspire similar and more sustainable typologies.

solar-garden-london

street-garden-design

Presumably, in a future world of autonomous vehicles, there will be both mechanisms and space to accommodate driverless gardens as well as cars. Freed-up streets could be used to transport all kinds of things, not just conventional goods and people but also micro-ecosystems and other stuff we have yet to think of. For now the, the robotic garden has been tested in London and remains prototype. It might not be as productive per square foot of space as many new urban farm designs, but perhaps it makes up in novelty and mobility what it lacks in terms of strict productivity.

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Cats, Not Ads: Feline Photos Take Over London Tube System

15 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

subway cats 1

The same ad spaces that shouted about insurance and laundry detergent last week now contain nothing but fluffy cats, as an art collective uses the internet’s number-one obsession to temporarily transform the London Tube system. The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS) is the result of a Kickstarter campaign by brand-new collective Glimpse aiming to “create a rip in the space time continuum.”

cat ads 3

The group raised enough money to buy all of the ad spaces in the Clapham Common station – a total of 68 – for a two-week period, and the new posters feature cats from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and the Cats Protection charity. The organizers are careful to note that they’re not against advertising per se, but rather hope that the project will “inspire people to think differently about the world and realize they have the power to change it.”

The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service replaced 68 adverts in Clapham Common tube station with pictures of cats. Organisers say they hope the pictures will help people think differently about the world around them. Credit: CatsnotAds.org

But the broader point – and appeal – of CATS is the citizen takeover of public spaces, with everyday people getting to decide what they want to look at as they navigate their cities. Wouldn’t you rather be surrounded by what essentially functions as an ad for animal rescue services than dozens of posters pushing a bunch of junk corporations want you to purchase?

cat ads 2

“Back in February we asked ourselves to ‘imagine a world where friends and experiences were more valuable than stuff you can buy,’” says Glimpse founder James Turner in a post on Medium. “The team began thinking about crowdfunding to replace Tube adverts with something else. Beautiful forests? Time spent with family? Hmmm. We wanted this to become famous, so we needed something the internet would love. Frame it that way and the answer’s obvious. Cats.”

“We’ve been on the news in China, and one of our backers is flying in from America to see his cat in one of the final posters. This project has uncorked a kind of energy that I haven’t experienced before. When you talk about CATS, eyes light up and new ideas start to flow. We don’t know exactly how Glimpse is going to work, but we want to carry this energy with us as we grow up.”

[ By SA Rogers in Design & Guerilla Ads & Marketing. ]

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Anti-Gravity Boots: London Shoe Artwork Defies Laws & Physics

09 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

anti gravity shoes street

There are many theories, but no one is quite sure where the practice of throwing shoes over raised urban infrastructure started. Some suggest bullies take shoes from other kids and toss them over power and telephone lines; other think it could be a way of marking gang or drug-dealing territories. Or perhaps people just make and lose bad bets, paying the price with sore feet.

shoe on wire art

laced shoe downside up

Whatever the reason, London street artist Pejac (images by Gary Van Handley) has taken the shoe-on-a-wire concept to the next level, with individual and paired shoes seeming to hang upside-down, pulled inexplicably toward the sky. Presumably to minimize annoyance to the city (and possible damage to critical lines), the artist in this case opted to use poles rather than wires for support.

gravity shoe art installation

gravity suspended shoes

Titled Downside Up, this series of shoe art installations across East London are in part a series of street artworks but also a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming solo exhibit. Pejac is well known for both silly and thought-provoking interventions, often manipulating built environments in subtle ways by pealing paint or through small installations easily missed by less observant passersby.

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Pigeons on Patrol: Birds with Backpacks Monitor London Air Pollution

10 May

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 5.31.38 PM

Not all pigeons are rats with wings. Some of them actually strap on tiny backpacks and go to their jobs every day, just like the rest of us. In fact, a flock of pigeons in London play a central role in monitoring the air pollution in the city, their little black fashion accessories equipped with lightweight sensors that test the levels of nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases, reporting the results on Twitter. Londoners who tweet their locations to @PigeonAir get an instant response from one of the pigeons with the level of air pollution in their area.

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Paris-based tech company Plume Labs developed an app that gives residents access to information and advice about pollution in the city, and an interactive live map on the project’s website provides more neighborhood-specific details. A well-known pigeon expert named Brian Woodhouse provided a flock of racing pigeons, which are healthier and hardier than street pigeons, for the mission.

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The project was only in action for three days during March, and the pigeons are now taking a break, but the novelty of the miniature backpacks got thousands of city residents talking about air pollution, which kills nearly 9,500 Londoners each year. Now, Plume Labs has turned to human Londoners for assistance, asking them to wear their own sensors to crowdsource detailed readings of air pollution in virtually every corner of the city.

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You have to admit, no matter what you think of the pesky birds, the sight of those tiny mesh suits on tiny hangers labeled with each pigeon’s name are ridiculously cute.