Legion is the company behind the leading pedestrian simulation software, Studio 2006 and its accompanying animation software, Legion 3D 2006. Both are used worldwide to optimise the design and operation of public spaces. Such spaces typically include: transport terminals; sport, entertainment and leisure venues; shopping centres; commercial and public buildings; and venues for major international events like the Olympics.

Our broad global portfolio includes customers such as Transport for London, NYCT, Madrid Metro and MTR Hong Kong; partners such as AECOM, ARUP UK and Parsons Brinckerhoff China; and high-profile projects that include the Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London Olympics.

For our customers, using Legion leads to improved cost management, better risk management, improved security planning, and increased comfort and safety in public places. Our patented simulation technology is the result of many years inter-disciplinary research into pedestrian behaviour.

The algorithms underpinning the software are the product of the company's extensive research programme into actual pedestrian behaviour. Since 1999, research and development carried out by Legion and our research institute (Maia) has gathered more than 1000 hours of video footage of pedestrians in 14 cities on three continents, covering more than 40 discrete contexts. This footage has been used to develop accurate computational algorithms, which are calibrated according to our observations and validated against genuine pedestrian movements.
The analysis of this video footage is a manual process which requires an operator to step through each frame of the video and mark the position of each pedestrian. The time and resources required to perform this analysis mean that it is a lengthy and expensive process to calibrate the Legion simulator for new pedestrian types and contexts. While some automated tracking algorithms and software exist they are not accurate enough for Legion's needs.

This challenge would allow Legion to work with a leading academic institution, with extensive digital imaging experience, to develop algorithms to automatically track pedestrians in video footage with a high level of accuracy. The resulting data would be used to calibrate the Legion simulator for new pedestrian types and in different contexts. This calibration will widen the scope of applications for Legion simulation software. The accurate simulation of the movement of people in the built environment provides the opportunity to study the impact of different operational schemes. This includes the analysis of energy use in a building. For example, does a particular operational scheme allow an area of a building to be closed earlier or opened later? Can lighting and heating systems be turned off in certain areas? Can escalators be switched off because an area is unoccupied?

Contact

James Amos
Head of Product Development
Legion Limited
Tel. +44 (0)20 7793 0200
Fax. +44 (0)20 7793 8948

james.amos@legion.com
www.legion.com<http://www.legion.com>

Interactive Sign Posts turn and communicate memories, events, history and what is important to an area and local community that are living and working there. The information displayed can communicated a number of different aspects of the place - from sounds and smells to relationships, people, and the seasons. It looks to enhance identity of the location and through this gives locals and visitors a starting point to explore the place. Also through creating the content it allows the local community to look closely at their home and what makes it important.

Some examples of content are:

• Wildlife in the area and the seasons for example birds and butterflies.
• History and stories from the local area.
• School and community events and future events.
• Awareness of the community and issues that people believe in.

Through the variety of content it allows for different groups of people to engage within the development of the content. Different viewpoints can be explored from all the generations.

It works by fins moving at different speeds and give information that relates to time, distance and direction. The information looks to enhance people's curiosity of the place. Also if the event or information is further away the text will move slowly and if it is close by the text will scroll quicker, giving an indication of the information with regard to the space.

Below are summaries of how it can work at different time during the development of the Olympics:

• Before the Olympics: To allow people to be involved in the content with regard to the location. Through this the local community can explore history and important spaces within the development and its surroundings and communicate what they are looking for in the future.
• During the Olympics: The content can be related to the Olympics and the space. It will allow visitors to explore and inform them of the place, its history and local community as well as the events happening at the Olympics. The information can be related to time, therefore show memories of the event, stories from competitors and visitors. This content can be added to the previous content collected and developed give a variety of stories and viewpoints.
• At this time a remote version travels around London, point out what is happening, or has happened at the Olympics and where, therefore giving allowing people to build up a relationship with the event and its location.

Legacy after the Olympics:

To be a permanent piece that can be added to. During it's journey the piece has built a history and a community. This history is important and needs to be communicated to the new development and new community that will move in as well as reminding locals. It will allow people to explore and think about the small things that make a place a home, from the smell of lavender, to the big things like the fact that an Olympic event took place at the location.

Contact:

Annick Collins

Superblue Design Ltd
07967742277

www. superblue.co.uk

PIE (Peripheral Image Enhanced) Accessible Signage. PIE is a combined visual and tactile signage system. It simply but effectively meets the requirements of the UK Government's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). That is, to provide equally visual and tactile signage in a public building for everyone needing it. Furthermore, PIE fully complies with the UN 12 May 2008 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, where accessibility should be at the design stage and not an afterthought. It is estimated that there are some 2 million people in the UK with a recognised visual disability, out of which, 1.5 million are partially sighted and 0.5 million registerable as blind of which, approximately only 15,000- 3% will be proficient in Braille. Therefore, less than 1% of the visually impaired population in the UK can be said to benefit from the current use of the addition of words in Braille. Thus, 99% of the visually impaired population in the UK are unable to benefit from the signs that are currently being introduced to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act, (DDA) regulations where a legend is added to established symbols in typeface and Braille to achieve equal accessibility.

The objective of PIE signage is to introduce an equally tactile/visual signage system to provide equal access to the fully sighted, the partially sighted and the blind population in an all-inclusive uncluttered format. For example, for a door to a public toilet, three outer shapes are used in which standard BSI symbols are placed. The male symbol is seen within a square, the female symbol is seen within a circle. The wheelchair access symbol is seen within a new shape called a "squircle". This is formed from a combination of a square and circle whereby the four corners of the square protrude beyond the edge of the circle. To extend the use of PIE beyond the three signs to a public toilet, a fourth peripheral image is used. This is a concentric diamond shape that is created from the square image by presenting it as a diamond. This is a more complex sign in that it can be formed as either a wayfinding, information or location sign. This is achieved by the inclusion or otherwise of a triangle symbol within any of the four points of the diamond in addition to the inner symbol. In addition to the four distinct shapes of the PIE system, a further tactile element is included to the face of the outer edge to enable instant unequivocal tactile recognition by a blind person from a single touch of the sign. With PIE, there is no language barrier, making it of greater use to people with language, literacy and learning difficulties. The visual aspect of PIE can be presented in any combination of colour to meet architectural and design requirements. The tactile element is a fixed specification for familiarisation to blind and partially sighted people. Modifications to the CAD work are in hand from which pre-production samples will be generated shortly.

Contact

John Slade
VISION AWARENESS
SladeColour Products for the Blind
iB Management Solutions
Tel/Fax: 020 8599 4256

jslade@visionawareness.co.uk