Hammerhead
Bicycle's Vehicle Sensor
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Hammerhead is a sensing and warning system designed for bicycles to avoid accidents with vehicles. It uses lidar to detect incoming vehicles and warn cyclists with sounds and haptic vibration, while flashing to drivers for potential collision. Hammerhead comes as a pair mounted on the handlebar and used as bicycle grips.
Type: Senior Thesis
Duration: 12 weeks
Category: Safety Design, Transportation Design, Consumer Electronics
Problem
Bicycles are becoming more and more popular in modern life. With that comes safety problem. While the automotive industry is developing technology to make travelling safer, those who bike has been overlooked.
The goal of this project is to take a closer look into potential safety advancements. This product employs these advancements to help cyclists avoid accidents.
Development
The project start with the research phase, including many interviews with cyclists from different backgrounds, follow by a study on a series of published research papers about bike safety. The result is a list of insights that can lead to design opportunities.
The next step is to turn these design opportunities into a product through ideation, evaluation, and iteration using sketch and CAD. The 3D model was printed out and then tested for ergonomic and usability.
Design
Hammerhead will replace the traditional grip on the bike. This allows two Hammerhead units to be mounted on both side of the handlebar, and use their lidars to scan the movement of surrounding vehicles. The grip parts of the device can also take advantage of users holding position to release haptic vibration warnings.
Street Scanning
While cycling, the lidar constantly spins to scan its surrounding environment, and predict the movement of vehicles on the street.
Warning mechanism
Once Hammerhead detects an incoming vehicle, the light will start flashing to get the driver more aware of the bike.
If the vehicle's movement might cause an accident, the device will trigger haptic vibration independently on both left and right grips so cyclists can maneuver and avoid collision. An alarm sound is also set off in this situation.
Energy Use
During the day, the device charges itself using the solar film on top, and store energy in the battery to use at night.
