The Pigeon Simulator

+ Brandon Fuller

From the One Per Cent blog at NewScientist, a brief video on the Pigeon Simulator created by University College London researcher George Mackerron.

The simulator lets users fly around London in Google Earth by mimicking the motions of a pigeon in front of a Kinect depth camera. The system recognise a number of flying gestures: banking left or right to turn, flapping your arms to gain height and leaning forward to dive. Users can also perform a “beam me up Scotty” gesture by placing one hand on their chest, returning them to the starting point at UCL.Flying around is enjoyable in itself, but users can also check out live data from around the city detailing information such as current air pollution levels, recent tweets and the height of the river Thames. The data is fed in from another project at the conference called CityDashboard, which gives users a range of custom widgets with information about London.

HT Suzy Khimm at Wonkblog.

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