Sustainable Urban Lighting: Philips' Light Blossom
The people at Philips know their way with lighting, and now they're offering us a glimpse inside the light-cooking Philips kitchen. Welcome to Philips' future: introducing the Light Blossom Sustainable City Light!
These lanterns can generate power during the day, either by using their rotating (windturbine-like) petals to collect wind-energy, or by using the solar cells inside the same petals to coll...
The people at Philips know their way with lighting, and now they're offering us a glimpse inside the light-cooking Philips kitchen. Welcome to Philips' future: introducing the Light Blossom Sustainable City Light!
These lanterns can generate power during the day, either by using their rotating (windturbine-like) petals to collect wind-energy, or by using the solar cells inside the same petals to collect energy from the sun (complete with mimicking sunflower's sun-following behavior). When they're collecting power, passersby are notified with an LED display on the 'stem' of the plantlike-lanterns. The lanterns can be totally self-providing, and can even put 'excess' power back into the grid. During nighttime, the petals fold and the LEDs in the 'flower' switch on, illuminating the area while making sure no light is leaked upwards, causing horrible light pollution. They're also equipped with proximity sensors, and go into an energy-saving standby mode when no one's around.
But before you start drooling too much... Back to reality! Let's face it: these hightech eco-beauties will probably never make it to the streets. They can't be 'vandalism-proof' enough to survive for more than a week in your average tough urban landscape. I'm afraid they'll stay in Philips' pre-rendered CGI utopia forever :'(. Still they're very awesome! :D
These lanterns can generate power during the day, either by using their rotating (windturbine-like) petals to collect wind-energy, or by using the solar cells inside the same petals to collect energy from the sun (complete with mimicking sunflower's sun-following behavior). When they're collecting power, passersby are notified with an LED display on the 'stem' of the plantlike-lanterns. The lanterns can be totally self-providing, and can even put 'excess' power back into the grid. During nighttime, the petals fold and the LEDs in the 'flower' switch on, illuminating the area while making sure no light is leaked upwards, causing horrible light pollution. They're also equipped with proximity sensors, and go into an energy-saving standby mode when no one's around.
But before you start drooling too much... Back to reality! Let's face it: these hightech eco-beauties will probably never make it to the streets. They can't be 'vandalism-proof' enough to survive for more than a week in your average tough urban landscape. I'm afraid they'll stay in Philips' pre-rendered CGI utopia forever :'(. Still they're very awesome! :D
For more info and pictures, head on to the Philips website.