What if bollards are robots?

Imagine the street in the future is a fluid and flat surface without obstacles and infrastructures. The robotic bollards could be implemented in the streets and function as dynamic infrastructures based on the needs of the citizens. ​

Bollard Bots will physically shape the streets during the day time, and dynamically adapt the lane markings at night by projections. It enables the city to be more dynamic and human-centric. ​

Problem

How do we design a city that is human-centered, instead of car centered?

Current cities are car-centric, and people are constrained to the infrastructures in the city so much that they walk on sidewalks even when there are no cars. How can we design a robot that could be implemented in the city, creating a city that is really "human-centric"?

Proposed solution

Introducing a dynamic robot

BollardBot will physically move and functions as safety island to adapt the traffic flow. During night time, the embedded projector will project dynamic lane markings on the floor to fulfill the needs of the city.

Design & prototype

Result and lessons learned

This project won the first prize at the ​MIT Media Lab hackathon, and was honored by Don Norman personally.

As a designer, I think it is really important for us to understand what do the users care, instead of what "we" think they might care about. In this project we actually go out to the streets and interview people in greater Boston area, collecting over 40 feedbacks from the citizens sharing what do they care most in the city.​ I think this step is really critical, based on the feedback of our users we started to program and design our robot.

Universal studio collaboration

Universal studio is one of the sponsor companies of the MIT Media Lab. The R&D Advanced Technology team saw the project and invited us to the Orlando resort to host a workshop and propose robotic solutions.

One major problem that we noticed at the park is the traffic control. There are multiple parades in the park during the day, and the park always needs to deploy staffs to keep the tourists from blocking the road. As Universal studio aims to provide an immersive experience for the visitors, having staffs to block the people somehow breaks the experience.

We propose to use the same technology that we used for Bollardbot, and transform the robot to the studio's characters. When there is no parades, these robots sit quietly in the park as infrastructures. When the parade starts, the robots will form together and guide the visitors to the sidewalk. We proposed the Minions robots that fit in to the park's theme without breaking the immersive experience for the visitors.

Due to the NDA I cannot show more information of the park, but our team explored the back of the house where the park employees travel and proposed other robotic solutions. Stay tuned on the MIT Media Lab – City Science Group website for future information.