The Municipal Lantern-bot - A new way of lighting the city

Light pollution in our cities is a serious problem.  We can no longer see the stars.  Birds and insects have their circadian rythyms upset.  Energy is wasted illuminating empty streets.  Streetlights are also used as a tool of surveillance, and are therefore fundamentally inimical to human freedom.  Something must be done.

But in spite of all the obvious problems with over-lit cities, people still insist on having lights at night.  There is a widespread belief that lighting areas prevents crime, in spite of limited evidence.  Strangely, many people even feel safer when streetlights expose them to all and sundry, instead of when they have plenty of shadows to hide in.  There are also certain practical benefits to some minimal level of light in an ability to see where you're going, and not break your leg stumbling around in the dark

What if there was a way we could keep, even enhance, the wayfinding and surveillance fundtions of streetlights; while at the same time making them opt-in, and protecting wildlife.  Enter the Municipal Lantern-bot:

The municipal lantern-bot (MLB), is a four-legged robot with a lantern at the top, vaguely reminiscent of a bacteriophage in form.  In addition to the lantern, which directs amber light downwards, it has on its crown a camera, and a small array of red leds for displays.  MLB's will distribute themselves around the city, ensuring a certain amount of coverage, and most of the time will sit on charging pads in standby mode, much dimmed.  Anyone can walk up to am MLB and ask it to either follow them, or lead them to a location - the MLB should react to limited set of commands in a wide variety of languages, as well as be instructable with a smart-phone app.  The MLB's will all be networked, and when in active mode will save footage from the camera to a temporary storage system.  At any time, a user -- or really anyone nearby -- can ask for help, and be connected to emergency services.

By saving video footage, and by functioning as a connection to emergency services, the surveillance and safety functions of the streetlight become much more active and comprehensive.  By having footage saved to a server only when active, the MLB preserves privacy for anyone who might feel safer in the shadows.  They show the potential to have a smart, ecological city that is not a panoptical dystopia.

Advances in AI will be required to implement the MLBs, particularly in the area of speech recognition in a wider range of languages and accents than are currently supported, but the technology is not excessively SFnal.  A better world is available to us, if only we will build it.