Trek Route -4th Year Project -Collaboration with Li Chen

In semester one of Fourth Year we had a group design module in which we were asked to design a product and its digital counterpart. Through research, myself and Li discovered that the biggest issue for cyclists was that they didn't feel safe around motorists so we endeavored to develop something that would allow the cyclists to make motorists aware of their presence. 

The lights are incorporated into the helmet. At the front is a white led and at the back is a red led strip. At the sides are amber lights. The helmet also contains 3 ultrasound sensors (same technology as parking sensors in cars). These detect cars that are approaching the cyclist. There are 2 invisible "barriers" or "perimeters around the cyclist. When a car is outside either of these perimeters, the helmet does not react. Note that there are 3 settings -totally off so that the helmet does not trigger when not in use, lights off but sensors on for daytime use and lights on and sensors on for use in the dark.  

The outer perimeter which is displayed in green (in the 2nd board below), is the first perimeter, which, if breached will cause the lights to start flickering and to shine at a greater intensity than normal. This is supposed to warn motorists to back off and give the cyclist space. If the second barrier is breached then the lights reach their maximum intensity in both brightness and frequency of flashing. If a cyclist is cycling down a busy road and has to cycle close to the cars, then at least the high intensity flashing will alert motorists to the cyclist's presence. 

All the information of how often the green and red barriers are broken is fed back to an iPhone app which records the data, along with the data of all other cyclists to form a map of most dangerous routes (ie routes in which the red perimeter is broken most often), the busiest routes (ie routes in which either perimeter was broken, greatest number of times) and the quietest routes (ie the routes in which either perimeter was broken the least amount of times). 

Notes Iphone App image obtained from: http://www.mobiletracker.net/archives/2007/01/09/apple-iphone