As our cities edge closer to a future where robots move alongside humans, the need for innovative traffic management becomes more urgent. Enter POLIS, a visionary traffic control system designed by Jimin Kim, created to keep urban spaces running smoothly as robots, drones, and humans share the streets. The POLIS project reimagines city safety for the age of intelligent machines, blending advanced technology with urban design to reduce accidents and protect everyone moving through the city.
POLIS is a smart traffic control station intended for robot-saturated cities like the fictional Acropolis. Unlike traditional traffic lights or cameras, POLIS is built to understand and manage the complex interactions between a wide variety of moving entities. These include not just humans and vehicles, but also delivery robots, cleaning bots, industrial machines, drones, and even animals. By mapping and tracking the movement of these different groups, POLIS aims to prevent collisions of all kinds, whether it is a human bumping into a delivery robot or a drone crossing paths with a building.
Designer: Jimin Kim
The heart of the POLIS system is a pair of core components. The first is a primary security unit equipped with advanced SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) sensors. These sensors give POLIS the ability to detect and predict potential accidents before they happen. If an incident does occur, the second component springs into action: a security barricade robot that can quickly deploy physical barriers, blocking off hazardous areas to prevent secondary or even tertiary accidents.
One of the key strengths of POLIS is its ability to blend seamlessly into the urban landscape. The units are designed to look sleek and modern, almost like a futuristic lamppost. Their coverage extends in concentric circles, with a close, medium, and long detection range, ensuring that every corner of the city is monitored for safety. The system communicates wirelessly, allowing multiple POLIS units to work together across neighborhoods and city blocks for comprehensive coverage.
POLIS goes beyond just technology by addressing real-world safety scenarios. It can handle a wide range of accident types, such as collisions between humans and robots, robots and animals, robots and buildings, or even a robot hitting a traffic light. This proactive approach is essential in cities where robots and smart devices are increasingly becoming part of everyday life. Jimin Kim’s design for POLIS points toward a future where technology and urban safety are perfectly integrated. By making cities safer for both people and machines, POLIS empowers urban areas to grow smarter and more efficient. For cities preparing for a new era of automation, POLIS offers a glimpse of how the right design can keep everyone, including robots or humans, moving safely.
The post POLIS concept reimagines urban traffic safety in robot-powered cities first appeared on Yanko Design.