Lighting in Design Q1 2019

Ed Space

L ast month I attended an IESSA meeting in Northriding, Gauteng. The presenta- tion of the evening, ‘Augmented reality & the lighted environment’ was by Retief Coetzer from BEKA Schréder who is passionate about the topic, having envisioned – and then driven – the process to create a first in the world Augmented Reality (AR) app for street lighting applications. He started by explaining that augmented reality is when digital information is overlaid onto the actual physical world. It’s not changing reality, its augmenting some of it the way you want it. Two years ago AR was new even to Coetzer, but it is now predicted that with the fourth industrial revolution, in a short five years everyone will interact with AR in some way in their day-to-day lives – on some sort of device. Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple, says of AR that, “Once it arrives, it will be everywhere. I don’t think there is any sector or industry that will be untouched by AR. The real difference between virtually reality (VR) and AR is not the immersive aspect, but that we will use AR in our everyday lives, where we live, learn and work. It will become as much a part of our day as eating three meals.” Coetzer showed a number of videos to illustrate how AR is currently being ad- opted by industry in applications ranging from 3D visualisation and AR in surgery in the medical field to a Ducati motorcycle engine being manufactured with the as- sistance of AR. “Projectors tell the person assembling the engine what to do next, with colours highlighting whether or not they are doing it right, negating human error in production lines,” he noted. He pointed out that benefits of AR include it being immersive and accessible by all – smartphone sales grew by 12.4 percent year on year in South Africa in the first quarter of 2018. “Most importantly for me,” he said, “is that it is educational and easily understood, as you can explain a concept so much easier visually.” Lighting to the lay person can be difficult to comprehend, especially when trying to explain certain terms and ideas, such as photometry, polar diagrams, lux, candela per square metre, isometric and symmetric distribution. “I believe AR will play a vital role in educating clients by explaining certain terms visually and making it more im- mersive. ARwill enable manufacturers and designers to reach people who have never known that lighting is a ‘thing’ and miss it only when it’s not there,” said Coetzer. To round off the evening BEKA Schréder’s AR app was demonstrated. It allows users to augment reality, in real time, by placing scaled models of the company’s products and poles in any environment, indoors and outdoors. Users can see differ- ences in photometry and how light is perceived by switching the products on and off in the augmented reality environment. Coetzer, however, believes we are just scratching the surface and that there is much more to come; “AR is an inescapable fact. Get used to it.” Lighting in Design will be exploring this topic in depth in our next issue. In the meantime, however, in this issue we present other exciting lighting developments including the rapid rise of specialist horticultural lighting as well as an innovative lighting installation at Rosebank Link, which features a 124 m 2 LED video screen that ties in with a strip screen display that forms part of the building’s exterior lighting. Editor: Gregg Cocking (lighting@crown.co.za) • Advertising manager: Carin Hannay (carinh@crown.co.za) Layout: Adel JvR Bothma • Circulation: Karen Smith Cover: The MARC, photograph by Byron Lottering Published by Crown Publications cc PO Box 140, Bedfordview, 2008 - Tel: +27 (0)11 622 4770 Fax: +27 (0)11 615 6108 - Website: www.crown.co.za ABC 4 th quarter: 3 475 • Printed by: Tandym Print All issues of Lighting in Design can be viewed on our website. Visit www.lightingindesignmagazine.co.za Gregg

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LiD Q1 - 2019