Cool pigeon project.
Feb. 6th, 2006 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bunrab for this story (I'm paying attention!)
I shan't debate the "usefulness" of ticks here today, but pigeons are yet again proving themselves to be very useful. Historic uses for pigeons have included food, amusement, and communication--now they're going to be used as scientific probes.
Got your own blog yet? If not you'd better hurry up if you don't want to be beaten to it by a flock of pigeons. Later this year 20 of the birds will take to the skies above San Jose, California, each carrying a GPS receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic cellphone. They will measure levels of pollutants they encounter, and beam back their findings as text messages to a blog in real time.
"We are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone," says interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa of the University of California, Irvine, who came up with the idea of the pigeon blog with her students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The team has built a prototype of the pigeons' kit containing a cellphone circuit board with SIM card and communication chips, a GPS receiver and carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide sensors. They now plan to squeeze all the components onto a single board small enough for the birds to carry in a back pack.
The pigeon bloggers are due to be released at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts' annual symposium in San Jose on 5 August. The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an interactive map. As well as providing local residents with real-time data on air quality, da Costa hopes the pigeon blog will inspire people to come up with new ways to monitor the environment. The pigeons will also carry cameras around their necks and post aerial photos to the blog.
Here are my questions: How many times can you use the word "blog" in a 250 word article? (This is one of the things I hate about a lot of science writing for the public--there's a need to be "grabby," to use some pop culture phrase that is part of the zeitgeist to lure the otherwise uninterested into reading the article--"blogs are hip right now, emphasize that aspect of the story!" 1/37th of the story is the word "blog." This article will be the most dated piece of writing in the world in 5 years.)
That aside, I'm actually much more interested in the photos the pigeons will be taking than the air pollution data. One of my fantasy projects is a movie filmed from the point of view of a pigeon. With this technology, plus rc helecopters, and some cgi, you could do a real convicing job. The tough part would be writing a script that anyone besides me would want to see. After all, I liked "Falken's Oga."
Another question--whose pigeons are these? I assume they didn't trap wild pigeons from San Jose, they must be using someone's captive flock. If so, are they protected at night in a dovecote? Or were they released, fully? (I doubt that's legal--but I don't know the laws regarding pigeon-keeping...hmm, how come pigeon keepers can release their birds into the city but if you did it with, say, goats, you'd get in trouble?)
The potential for using pigeons as scientific probes and spying devices I think is enormous. I can't wait to find out what happens.
That's right, I said "shan't."
bunrab for this story (I'm paying attention!)I shan't debate the "usefulness" of ticks here today, but pigeons are yet again proving themselves to be very useful. Historic uses for pigeons have included food, amusement, and communication--now they're going to be used as scientific probes.
Got your own blog yet? If not you'd better hurry up if you don't want to be beaten to it by a flock of pigeons. Later this year 20 of the birds will take to the skies above San Jose, California, each carrying a GPS receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic cellphone. They will measure levels of pollutants they encounter, and beam back their findings as text messages to a blog in real time.
"We are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone," says interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa of the University of California, Irvine, who came up with the idea of the pigeon blog with her students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The team has built a prototype of the pigeons' kit containing a cellphone circuit board with SIM card and communication chips, a GPS receiver and carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide sensors. They now plan to squeeze all the components onto a single board small enough for the birds to carry in a back pack.
The pigeon bloggers are due to be released at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts' annual symposium in San Jose on 5 August. The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an interactive map. As well as providing local residents with real-time data on air quality, da Costa hopes the pigeon blog will inspire people to come up with new ways to monitor the environment. The pigeons will also carry cameras around their necks and post aerial photos to the blog.
Here are my questions: How many times can you use the word "blog" in a 250 word article? (This is one of the things I hate about a lot of science writing for the public--there's a need to be "grabby," to use some pop culture phrase that is part of the zeitgeist to lure the otherwise uninterested into reading the article--"blogs are hip right now, emphasize that aspect of the story!" 1/37th of the story is the word "blog." This article will be the most dated piece of writing in the world in 5 years.)
That aside, I'm actually much more interested in the photos the pigeons will be taking than the air pollution data. One of my fantasy projects is a movie filmed from the point of view of a pigeon. With this technology, plus rc helecopters, and some cgi, you could do a real convicing job. The tough part would be writing a script that anyone besides me would want to see. After all, I liked "Falken's Oga."
Another question--whose pigeons are these? I assume they didn't trap wild pigeons from San Jose, they must be using someone's captive flock. If so, are they protected at night in a dovecote? Or were they released, fully? (I doubt that's legal--but I don't know the laws regarding pigeon-keeping...hmm, how come pigeon keepers can release their birds into the city but if you did it with, say, goats, you'd get in trouble?)
The potential for using pigeons as scientific probes and spying devices I think is enormous. I can't wait to find out what happens.
That's right, I said "shan't."
