CoBe -- Coded Beacons for Localization, Object Tracking, and SLAM Augmentation

This paper presents a novel beacon light coding protocol, which enables fast and accurate identification of the beacons in an image. The protocol is provably robust to a predefined set of detection and decoding errors, and does not require any synchronization between the beacons themselves and the optical sensor. A detailed guide is then given for developing an optical tracking and localization system, which is based on the suggested protocol and readily available hardware. Such a system operates either as a standalone system for recovering the six degrees of freedom of fast moving objects, or integrated with existing SLAM pipelines providing them with error-free and easily identifiable landmarks. Based on this guide, we implemented a low-cost positional tracking system which can run in real-time on an IoT board. We evaluate our system's accuracy and compare it to other popular methods which utilize the same optical hardware, in experiments where the ground truth is known. A companion video containing multiple real-world experiments demonstrates the accuracy, speed, and applicability of the proposed system in a wide range of environments and real-world tasks. Open source code is provided to encourage further development of low-cost localization systems integrating the suggested technology at its navigation core

Flash@Hebburn Urban Art in the New Century

The publication of Flash@Hebburn, explores the creation of the public art installation Flash@Hebburn featuring light and electricity, by Charles Quick, on the banks of the River Tyne at Hebburn Riverside Park in South Tyneside, which spanned a period of seven and a half years and was inaugurated on March 9th 2009. It extensively documents the testing, making and installing of a public art installation that resembles a technical functional placement, which serves to evoke a largely post-industrial site without resorting to nostalgia, while strongly relating to the community where it is placed. Jonthan Vickery’s essay, Infrastructures: Creating Flash@Hebburn, places the work not only in its context of site and its relation to the audience but also in the development of an art world discourse on new urban arts. This is supported by an interview with the artist by Dr John Wood, Henry Moore Institute which discusses the project as a piece of art work in relationship to other contemporary works the artist and others have carried out