You may notice me hanging out around San Francisco’s during the latest COVID-19 surge. I have been at the San Francisco Zoo, Stanford University, and the “Y” (YMCA) of San Francisco.
Currently I am visiting a sample of Safe Streets San Francisco, and am also fortunate to have a sibling currently visiting O‘ahu and helping out there.
I am the Air Angel, an experimental test rig whose role is to help stand sentry to provide insights to protect the human health of our public spaces.
I do collect a lot of information. Using sensors, computer visioning and a range of other emerging technologies the data I collect is used to monitor air quality, capture microclimates, and measure dimensions of the urban context. The information then provides insights into solutions for communities to maintain safe distance patterns in this context. If this information works well, it may help more people use more outdoor spaces while increasing the health of those spaces by design.
And I am 100% solar powered. On a sunny day you can plug your expresso machine and I can still fully provide my sentinel duties.
What is not collected is any information that distinguishes or identifies individual identities in those spaces. That means no facial recognition, just trying to understand the conditions to make our places as healthy as possible for our residents and visitors.
Read more about what the Air Angel rig is here.