Skywalks

Inspiration

When looking into various urban issues, one of the main issues that stood out to us was the heat island effect. This is caused by heat-absorbing infrastructure, a lack of natural vegetation, reduced shade, and the amount of heat generated by large amounts of human population. Another major issue we were considering was pedestrian safety; with an increased amount of drivers in highly populated areas, it becomes dangerous for people to walk along the streets. To try to solve these issues, we took inspiration from Toronto's skybridge system, natural tree canopies, and the few cases of automated canopies to help with crop regulation that we found.

What it does

Skywalks are similar to skybridges. Elevated above street-level, connecting two buildings, they offer not only a safer, cleaner area for pedestrians to walk, with a canopy included in the center beam along the top of the walkway, an automated system takes in temperature, air pressure, air quality, and light amounts to know when best to deploy. Each bridge is connected to a centralized system that utilizes AI to read local new stations, event schedules, etc. to help further with knowing when to deploy the canopy to best encourage increased usage. With multiple bridges spread throughout a city, they also work to block and disperse light before getting absorbed by the ground, reducing the heat island effect. By blocking some light, they also create a safer environment for drivers at dawn and dusk, preventing from having to drive with the sun in their eyes.

How we built it

We used an Arduino uno connected to a Grove Light Sensor 1.2, an Air Quality Sensor 1.3, a Grove Barometer Sensor (SPA06-003) 1.0, and a Grove LCD RGB Backlight 4.0. We used the sensors to pull environmental data and the LCD to display the values gathered to demonstrate how we would get the information needed to know when to deploy the canopies on the Skywalks.

Challenges we ran into

This is our first ever hackathon, so we weren't quite sure where to start after receiving the prompt. This led us to not really doing much of anything other than brainstorming the whole first day, and falling a little behind time-wise. Also, none of us have programmed an Arduino before, meaning we had to learn a new programming language (at least the basics) in a day, which caused a lot of frustration. This also made debugging very difficult, as we didn't know enough of the language to know where we were going wrong.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully programmed an Arduino for the first time, learning a new programming language through the use of a LOT of examples found online and the assistance of open AI. We also came up with a fairly complete proposal for the Skywalk system, including how we would get power and funding as well as what materials we would use and how the centralized system would work.

What we learned

As this was our first hackathon, we learned a lot about time management and thinking on the go. We also learned how to program an Arduino, furthered our knowledge of using Git's version control with the use of branching.

What's next for Skywalks

We believe that with a bit more planning Skywalks can be proposed for actual cities to implement to help make them safer and help handle the heat island effect. We are considering further edits to make after this weekend, even if this ends up being nothing more than a fun think-tank project.