South-Korean product designer Hanyoung Lee has come up with a safety device that could make traffic lights obsolete, or at least improve their effectiveness. His so-called Virtual Wall is designed for busy city streets. Instead of showing a red light when it’s time for pedestrians to cross the street, Lee’s Wall projects a curtain-like, two-dimensional image of giant people crossing the street. The real pedestrians walk behind their virtual counterparts.
Lee’s design—which hasn’t made it off the drawing board yet—works thanks to a stack of laser projectors installed in poles on opposites sides of the street. Digital renderings of the Wall can be found on Yanko Design, and while there’s no word on an actual prototype, the device would likely cost more than traditional traffic lights. Thus, any city thinking of commissioning a Virtual Wall might consider flashing advertising messages over the heads of the virtual pedestrians in order to help offset the system’s cost. Another potential issue might be how to activate the Wall so as not to startle motorists approaching an intersection.
We generally don’t feature concepts that haven’t yet made it to market, but this one seems to present a host of business opportunities, as well as great PR potential for the first cities that implement it. Besides halting traffic at intersections, the projected images could be used to direct crowds at large events or form temporary virtual fences to warn motorists that road construction crews are working nearby. And how about smart deer crossing walls, that can both detect and project oncoming deer?
Website: www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/04/21/cant-cross-a-virtual-wall
Contact: hanyoungs@gmail.com
Spotted by: Harry van Praag
Seems somewhat impossible to me. What if someone (or a car) stands in front of the beams? How do the beams actually 'thicken' to create the image?
tambien es un buen medio para implementar publicidad , no solo como semaforo
Hmm. I don't like to be neagtive about the ideas posted on here, but I feel that they should have some commercial merit for the present...
As far as I can tell, what he's proposing is impossible (with today's technology, at least)....
He has either:
1) Invented a new technology. If that is the case, then he's very clever, but using it in this application is only a minute part of the potential market.....think of the possibilities?
2) Made an futuristic/impossible product design. What merit does designing applications for technology that doesn't yet exist have here???
;)
Assuming that it works, it would need to be vandal proofed particularly well because of the lasers, given eyesight risks involved.
Yes lets get the electric fence voltage machines and set those up too.
There is no way this can be done without some kind of medium for the light to bounce off, e.g. a water mist.
Keep Springwise as it is please with cool, real ideas that are being done. Don't turn it into a "what if" design magazine.
Wasn't it this site that listed a virtual stop sign that would be projected on a wall of water at the start of a tunnel? Sounds pretty similar, except nothing for the light to bounce off of like said above.
www.toyotaresources.com
I work at a laser company and people are starting to email me asking how I can build this device for them... I think it should be made clear that this technology to produce floating "holograms" in free space DOES NOT EXIST. It actually violates the known laws of physics governing light. This isn't a minor design flaw, this is equivalent to featuring an article about a Star Trek transporter or force field. You can not project an image using light without having a surface or medium for the light to bounce off of. Please don't email laser companies asking for help building this thing! Arg!