Methodical Madness Goes Back to the Drawing Board

So, as far as I was concerned, our team had developed an excellent project Wednesday night, which covered all of the bases for the project requirements very well, which involved everyone equally, and which was very multi-disciplinary. As of our meeting Thursday night, we are somehow back at square one, with no ideas. Don't ask me how the whole thing derailed, it wasn't me. I still like the stadium project, though that may change in my quest for a design.

Here follows my consideration of what I want out of the final project.

I discussed in an earlier post the definition of a Heliotropic Smart Surface, and in another the definition of Sustainability. Each treatise was originally a part of this post, but I cut them out due to them being topics of their own, and this post was about to be ridiculously long and almost unreadable. So, just read those first. They give a good basis for what I am about to say.

There are two avenues we could go down. We can develop a surface, or we can develop a network of points that become a surface when you map them in relation to each other. Essentially, they are the same idea, only differentiated by scale. In the point-networking, we do have to worry about communicating with a centralized dispatch of sorts, or with each other. Otherwise, it is not a surface, it is just a collection of mutually exclusive points.

I'm just going to outline a couple of fairly neat ideas that I have. For the record, the stadium idea no longer qualifies - it is not heliotropic by definition. However, if it utilized shade to activate a mechanism, that would qualify as heliotropic, so possibly...

Heated Stadium Bleachers

Solar powered stadium seating - bleachers with some sort of solar panel inside of them, that also have a heating element. When shadowed at low temperatures (below 32F), bleachers will heat up to a temperature above freezing, in order to melt any snow off of them. Would also have touch sensors set to activate at a different temperature (say, 45F), so that when they feel a large amount of pressure, they heat up further to warm anyone sitting on them. Meets the requirements of being heliotropic, smart, and a surface. May or may not be sustainable, depending on what is done with the energy otherwise.

Self-Cleaning Skyscraper Windows

Windows that utilize a light-intensity detector on the outside and inside to determine a light gradient. They would know when the blinds are closed so that they don't activate unnecessarily, but when the blinds are open and the gradient is too large, they would tag the window for cleaning. Triple sensor could be used to determine whether or not the inside or outside of the window needs to be cleaned. A cleaning crew or solar-powered gecko-foot robot could then utilize this data to go up the side of the building to clean the window. Meets the requirements of being heliotropic, smart, and a surface, while also being sustainable. Bonus that this meets the surface and network of points requirements.

Solar Cockroach

Essentially, small robots that are good at staying out of sight. Will wander areas that are dark, but retreat at the first signs of light. An army of them could be utilized to monitor situations in an urban environment and report back data, such as staying out of sight and detecting people carrying weapons or something of the sort. Could possibly be used as street-cleaning robots, mapping out how much litter they pick up in an area and trending it to determine what areas need additional public trash cans, recycling bins, etc. Would only activate at night, and would avoid headlights. Heliotropic, smart, the group mind would be a surface, and it would be sustainable.