No, we’re not talking about Barbie, nor are we talking about GI Joe. Oh, okay, GI Joe is not a doll, it’s an action figure. We get it. In either case, we’re not talking about toys but rather a lighting laboratory in Denmark.
The Danish Outdoor Lighting Lab, or DOLL, has streetlights that brighten and dim when cars and people pass by. There are other streetlights that turn on and off with a tap on an iPad app. It demonstrates various ways that cities can save on electricity, cut carbon emissions, and even generate jobs.
DOLL explores lights that use LED technology. It has three laboratories, namely the Quality Lab, the Virtual Lab, and the Living Lab. Most of the labs are based in The Technical University of Denmark’s (DTU) Photonics department in Roskilde.
The latter laboratory is particularly interesting because it allows people to experience various smart lighting systems in the real world. It consists of a 9.2 kilometer (5.75 mile) network of roads and pathways in the Hersted Industrial Park, Albertslund, Denmark. It also has indoor mock-ups of homes, hospitals and schools so that people can walk through the lighting systems. DOLL tied up with 18 different companies which provided lighting in 37 different plots in the area. It is foreseen that the lights could also serve other smart functions like parking management, traffic status reporting, air quality feedback or even weather reporting.
DOLL complements Denmark’s ambitious goal to eliminate fossil fuel use by 2050. In order to achieve this, not only will the country need to replace their energy sources with renewables, they will also have to improve energy efficiency on a massive scale. The chief technical officer at DOLL Living Lab, Kim Brostrøm, says in the video that the technologies there can cut emissions from street lighting by a whopping 85%!
Now, if you think that they are playing around, check it out for yourself in the video here.
