Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Urban Smart Lighting Equipment (Hereinafter Referred to as USLE) Will Become a Comprehensive Solution for the Renewal and Construction of Smart Cities

Smart city is a large system with thorough perception, comprehensive interconnection and deep intelligence. Its core is to connect the physical, information, social and commercial infrastructures in modern cities by using information and digital technologies such as the Internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things to respond intelligently and quickly to the various demands of people’s livelihood, environmental protection, transportation, public safety, urban services, industrial and commercial activities and so on generated in the city, improve urban operational efficiency on the basis of energy conservation, and achieve urban green sustainable development of cities, and create a better life for urban residents [1, 2].

The street lamp is one of the important public facilities in the city. Through research, it is found that urban street lamps naturally exist in the three levels of perception, network and application in the smart city system, which is the most economical, the most environmentally friendly and the most rapid comprehensive solution to arrange the functions of each subsystem of the smart city. Its main advantages include the following aspects:

Street Lamps Are Regularly Distributed in the Urban Road Network

The design and construction of urban street lamps are carried out in accordance with the “Urban Road Lighting Design Standards”, so that the street lamps are regularly distributed along the urban roads according to the prescribed distance standards. With the deepening of the urbanization process, street lamps also extend to all corners of the city along with road construction.

Street Lamps Provide Precise Geographical Coordinates

According to the regularity and extensiveness of street lamps along urban roads, the precise positioning function of street lamps can be realized as long as the positioning device is installed on the street lamps, which makes it easier to realize intelligent traffic, security alarm, visual management and other functions in smart cities.

Street Lamps Have the Best Urban Communication Location

Street lamps are basically set up along both sides of urban roads, providing excellent urban communication positions. According to their own wireless network needs, communication operators can easily realize urban wireless network communication functions by installing mobile communication devices such as micro-base stations at the top of lamp posts in areas requiring network coverage.

Street Lamps Have an Existing Power Supply Network

The power supply lines between street lamps form a huge power supply network in the city. As the node of power supply network, street lamp is often used as the power access point of surrounding billboards, bus stop signs, road landscape and so on. Therefore, in the future, street lamp base can be fully used as car charging station. And a communication network installed along the power supply line can easily form an Internet of things road covering the whole city.

Street Lamp Has Better Design and Development Function

By integrating solar panels, video probes, micro-base stations, multimedia advertising screens, information interactive screens, detection instruments, charging stations and other hardware on the existing street lamps, it is easy to realize the perception and services of urban environment, traffic, lighting, life and other aspects, so as to quickly realize the multi-directional intelligent services and management of municipal administration, people’s livelihood and industry.

1.2 The Design and Development of USLE Will Play an Important Role in the Construction of Smart Cities

USLE will be an important application carrier to realize the renewal and construction of smart city. It will play a significant role in the following aspects.

USLE Construction Can Achieve Energy Saving and Emission Reduction in Cities

USLE construction is the need for smart cities to save energy and reduce emissions. In January 2017, the State Council of China issued a notice on the “13th Five-Year Plan” for energy conservation and emission reduction, in which the green lighting project was clearly defined in the key energy conservation projects [3]. The USLE can combine smart city street lamps with LED lighting to reduce the use of electricity, the consumption of coal and other fuels in power plants, and the emission of harmful gases such as carbon dioxide. In addition, photovoltaic solar panels, wind power generation and other power generation equipment can be installed on the top of the base terminal to increase the power supply. Moreover, visual management can be realized through the intelligent control system, and energy regulation and control can be carried out through the Internet of things according to actual demand, so as to achieve the goal of urban energy conservation and emission reduction.

USLE Construction Can Enhance the Image of the City

As the name card of a beautiful city, USLE reflects the scale of urban development, economic strength, management level, cultural positioning and other information. Its form is designed and developed according to the urban public environment, cultural landscape, historical relics, landmarks and other morphological elements, which can accurately express the urban material culture, spiritual culture and regional cultural concepts [4]. Moreover, the comprehensive utilization of lamp post is one of the important carriers to change the urban appearance and improve the urban image and connotation.

USLE Construction Can Make Full Use of Urban Resources to Achieve Sustainable Development

USLE can be connected to a variety of urban Internet of things information sensing equipment, such as: air quality, humidity, temperature and other weather detection equipment; traffic monitoring equipment such as cameras, infrared monitoring and alarm points; wireless communication equipment, like WIFI, and micro-base station; road signs, billboards, parking fees and other public service equipment. Therefore, functions such as environmental monitoring, traffic detection, intelligent charging station, scenic spot information and convenient services can be realized through the Internet of things. And USLE can make full use of all kinds of urban resources and realize the green and sustainable development of the city.

1.3 Product Design Based on User Experience

With the development of society and the continuous progress of science and technology, functional structural products designed and developed by the producer can no longer meet the personalized experience of users. In order to gain higher market competitiveness and better product revenue, more and more enterprises have begun to fully study the user experience of products and design products that conform to the user experience. Therefore, user-experience-oriented product design has become one of the important means for the development of design innovation and business activities in today’s society and enterprises, attracting more and more attention from the society and enterprises.

The design philosophy of user-experience-oriented originated from the concept of User-Center-Design (UCD) in Donald Arthur Norman’s book User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction that published in the late 1980s [5]. This is a design concept for a product, system or service that places the user in an important position in product development and design. The concept has been widely used in industrial design, interaction design, service design and ergonomics. User-oriented design requires designers to conduct in-depth analysis and research on user psychology, behavioral habits, and usage environments during product design, development, and maintenance. In addition, the designer needs to work from the user experience to the various stages of product design, and combine the influence of social and cultural aspects to finally design a product that meets the user experience.

2 The Concept, Application Scope and Content of USLE

2.1 The Basic Concept of USLE

The basic concepts of USLE can be summarized as follows: on the basis of LED energy-saving lighting function of urban street lamps, by integrating high-definition cameras, micro base station, wireless radio, LED electronic screen, electronic interactive screen, charging station, GPS positioning system, the environmental information acquisition sensor, alarm, photovoltaic panels and other hardware equipment, using advanced information technology such as Internet of things, Internet, big data, cloud computing, it is a set of technical terminal equipment, which transmits the collected data and information to the “USLE Information Management System” and makes immediate response and decision processing to realize smart city functions, such as intelligent control, energy-saving lighting, electric vehicle charging, information release and interaction, smart transportation, wireless city, environmental monitoring, voice broadcasting, and one-click calling for help under the interactive environment of big data [6].

2.2 The Application Scope of USLE

In September 2016, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government promulgated the “13th Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Construction of Smart Cities in Shanghai” [7]. The following will be combined with the overall framework of the 13th Five-Year Plan for Smart City Construction in Shanghai, China to illustrate the application area of USLE, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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The relationship diagrams of USLE and the smart city project to promote construction in the 13th five-year plan of Shanghai, China

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USLE Can Be Widely Used in Smart City Demonstration Areas to Improve the Image of Urban Areas

Shanghai mainly focuses on the five demonstration areas of smart community, smart village, smart business circle, smart park and smart new district, and promotes innovation pilot and application demonstration. As a terminal product developed on the basis of intelligent street light, USLE also has the advantages of street light, that is, it is ubiquitous in every corner of smart city area along with road network. Meanwhile, through the modeling design of USLE in different areas, the image of urban area can be further improved.

USLE Can Become an Important Technology Terminal Product of Smart Life, Smart Economy, Smart Governance and Smart Government Affair

The smart city in Shanghai will be specifically applied in the four aspects of smart life, smart economy, smart governance and smart government affair. Intelligent life includes eight aspects, which are intelligent transportation, intelligent health, intelligent education, intelligent endowment, intelligent culture, intelligent tourism, intelligent employment and intelligent weather. Smart economy includes Internet finance, smart shipping, smart business, smart enterprise and smart manufacturing. There are five sections included in smart governance, which are comprehensive management informatization, food safety informatization, environmental protection informatization, public safety informatization, and smart city lifeline. Smart government affair includes five platforms: the opening of public data, the integration of e-government, the upgrading of network services, public credit information, and public service channels. It can be found that these smart applications can be more or less implemented on the USLE. For example, the information interactive screen installed at the bottom of the lamp post can provide residents with information services such as social security, medical health, transportation, meteorological information, cultural entertainment, public utilities and intelligent security; the full coverage of the wireless communication network can be achieved through the micro-base station installed on the USLE lamp post, which can provide hardware support for the urban public information service platform, medical information system and other intelligent systems; also through the high-definition video camera installed on the top of the lamp post, traffic information collection and processing can be carried out, and the safety monitoring of urban road violations can be conducted, thus the visual management of urban traffic and public safety can be realized finally.

USLE Can Provide Basic and Affordable Information Network for Information Infrastructure

The foundation of promoting the construction of smart city is to accelerate the construction of new-generation information infrastructure. The original street lamp and wire network of USLE can provide basic and affordable information network for urban fiber broadband, wireless network, Internet of things and communication hub, thus further promoting the construction of smart city.

USLE Can Provide Data Collection and Security Monitoring Services for Data Resources, Information Technology Industry and Network Security

Another important basis for realizing urban intellectualization is to collect all kinds of data in the city through various sensors, and make a positive response to urban problems by timely processing data. And USLE is the best data acquisition terminal.

2.3 Analysis of the Extended Application Content and Technology of USLE

Cities at home and abroad have gradually begun to promote the construction of USLE. Through market research and literature retrieval analysis, according to incomplete statistics of USLE construction in domestic and foreign cities as of August 2018, the realized USLE smart application contents currently include smart control, energy-saving lighting, charging pile and other functions, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. By August 2018, the application content of USLE in domestic and foreign cities (incomplete statistics)
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As an important infrastructure of a smart city, urban smart street lamps cover all traffic networks in the city [8]. By adopting high-tech such as Internet of things and cloud computing, and then combining the accessible sensors with urban smart street lamps, the integrated sensing platform of unified intelligent street lamps Internet of things can be established in order to realize the sharing of sensing device resources in various application fields, the sharing of information resources collected by sensing terminals, the sharing of basic and comprehensive sensing network resources of smart street lamps Internet of things, and the application of various fields in smart cities, such as environmental monitoring and street lamp management, notice, Wi-Fi, advertisement, emergency dispatch and other cooperative work, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.
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The function application of internet of things about USLE

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The technical architecture of the integrated device of urban smart street lamp is mainly composed of five parts: smart city application, integrated Internet of things platform, multi-protocol gateway, integration of multiple perception-layer communication modes and sensor access. Among them, smart city application refers to the specific smart function application combined with urban smart street lamp. The integrated Internet of things platform provides a unified interface of the standard system to achieve unified Internet of things device management, data storage, data mining and other functions. The multi-protocol gateway adapts and transforms a variety of interfaces and protocols in the perception layer, supports Ethernet/GPRS/3G/WIFI and other modes, and transmits data to the integrated Internet of things platform. The integration of multiple perception-layer communication modes support 6LoWPAN, Zigbee wireless sensor network interconnection, RS485, RS232, CAN bus, power carrier, GPRSCDMA and other wireless communication modes, and provide open interface to support arbitrary addition of sensor devices. Sensor access refers to a variety of sensors, such as environmental monitoring, traffic monitoring and municipal pipe network monitoring, are supported by urban smart street lamps, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
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The technical framework of USLE

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3 Building the General Framework of the Emotional Design and Evaluation System of USLE Form Under User Experience

Through research and analysis of product concept design, product system design, product coordination design, product modular design and product intelligent system design, USLE’s innovative design process can include: product design requirements research, design definition and goal establishment, product program creative design, product function hardware analysis and cost accounting, product engineering structure design and prototype production, enterprise manufacturing, product commercial operation and use [9, 10]. In this process, users mainly participate in the work of user needs, perceptual design evaluation and product use experience. Therefore, users mainly appear as designers of design requirements and design ideas, testers of perceptual design evaluation, product use and interactive experiencers. The main work includes: users’ three-level emotional needs for the product, product emotional image needs evaluation, design prototype emotional evaluation, design model emotional evaluation, product use and interaction experience, etc., as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.
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The general framework of the emotional design and evaluation system of USLE form based on user experience.

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4 The Smart Lighting Design Practice of PRONA

The author participated in the design and development of Shanghai multi-functional smart lighting – PRONA smart lighting in the project “Development of Industrial Design Products based on LED Energy-saving Lighting Technology”, which is a financial support fund project of promoting the development of cultural and creative industries in Shanghai. PRONA intelligent lighting is designed through the general framework of the emotional design and evaluation system of USLE form under user experience, as shown in Fig. 5. Finally, through the user satisfaction survey, it was found that the average satisfaction of the designed PRONA was 8.7 (10 points in total), with high user satisfaction.

Fig. 5.
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PRONA Smart Lighting Design in Shanghai, China

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5 Conclusion

USLE is becoming a critical application carrier in reconstructing smart cities, playing a significant role in implementing energy conservation and emission reduction, enhancing urban image, utilizing urban resources, and promoting sustainable development. Through document retrieval, market research and the requirements analysis of User experience, this paper analyzes the background, meaning and development status of USLE, summarizes the construction of USLE and the intelligent functions that have been achieved, and teases out the relationship between USLE and smart city project application with the combination of the content of “13th Five-Year plan” for smart city construction in Shanghai. On this basis, the general framework of the emotional design and evaluation system of USLE form under user experience is put forward, which includes Five parts: (1) Users’ three levels of emotional needs for products; (2) the demand evaluation of product perceptual image; (3) the perception evaluation of design prototype; (4) the perception evaluation of design model; (5) product use and interaction experience. Finally, taking study of PRONA Smart Lighting Design in Shanghai, China for instance, it is proved that the general framework has strong feasibility and application value, which can provide pattern references for government, enterprises and designers to carry out innovative design and development of urban smart lighting equipment in the future.