What a City Bike Needs: Handlebars That Let You Know When to Turn

What a City Bike Needs: Handlebars That Let You Know When to Tun

Designers are transforming bikes with new tech to make it safer and easier to navigate city streets

Handlebars on the Blackline model let you know when to turn. (Photo courtesy of MNML)

By Randy Rieland

smithsonian.com
August 1, 2014

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As someone who lives in a city, I often find myself watching people driving cars and people riding bikes salute each other, and not in a good way. Apparently, the “Share the Road” concept needs more work.

And yet, the number of urban cyclists keeps growing, including here in Washington D.C., where just last week two new bike lanes opened up in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, aka “America’s Main Street.” With more Millennials gravitating toward city living and away from owning cars, the trend is only going to pick up speed.

But this raises some questions: What makes the ideal urban bike? Yes, it should be solid and easy to maneuver, but what else should it be able to do? How can a bike be re-imagined to make riding around on city streets safer and less daunting for newbie urban bikers.

That’s pretty much the challenge taken on by design teams in five different cities—San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Portland—competing in something known as the Oregon Manifest Bike Design Project. The idea is to create a city-concept bike, but one that’s all about urban utility and is street-practical—so practical that Fuji Bikes has agreed to manufacture the winning model, as decided by online voters.

Catching a buzz
So what did the designers come up with?
For starters, smart handlebars. The team in Portland, Oregon, created a bike they named Solid, and it includes handlebars that, in response to an app on the rider’s smartphone, give him or her directions by buzzing. If a rider is supposed to turn right, that side of the handlebars starts buzzing. The buzz gets more insistent as they get closer to the turn. If they go past it, both sides of the handlebar vibrate.

The Chicago design team followed a similar tack with its model, named the Blackline after one of the city’s elevated train lines. It uses smart handlebars designed by Helios Bars, an outfit that raised more than $120,000 on Kickstarter last year. Your smartphone is linked to the bike through Bluetooth and, once you input your destination, the handlebars take over.  But instead of buzzing when you need to turn, colored LED lights at each end of the handlebar start blinking, letting you know which way to go—not to mention giving drivers around you a better idea of where you’re headed.

The handlebars can also be set to speedometer mode, which means the lights change color in response to how fast you’re moving. And when you get to where you’re going, but want to make sure you don’t forget where you parked, you can shoot the bike a text and it responds by sending a Google map to your phone, pinpointing the location.  

The Seattle team—they named their bike Denny—took the handlebar in a different direction. It can’t talk to a phone, but it can detach and be converted into a U-shaped bike lock.

Coffee on board

Of course, if a bike is going to be your main mode of transit, it better be able to carry stuff—a bag of groceries, coffee for you and your office mates. The New York designers took on that challenge by building an ingenious storage system in their model, which they dubbed Merge. It actually fits inside the bike’s frame, but when you need to haul something, you just pull a rear light and a spring-loaded tray pops into place behind the seat. Should you need a bungee cord, it has that, too, hidden inside another of the bike’s tubes.

The San Francisco team, meanwhile, has taken more of a plug-and-play approach. Their model, called Evo, comes with all kinds of attachments—storage racks, baskets, baby carriers—that easily connect to the front and back of the bike. When you’re done hauling, you just de-accessorize.  
There are plenty of other clever features in the five bikes in the competition: A phone-charging port powered by the front wheel (Portland, New York); an onboard computer that automatically shifts gears (Seattle); and sensor-driven lights that get brighter or dimmer based on natural conditions (Portland, Seattle).

To get a look at where urban bikes are headed, check out all the models on the Bike Design Project website. You have until Sunday at noon (PST) to vote for your favorite.

Remember when the coolest thing you could do with a bike was flap a balloon in the spokes?

Feet, don’t fail me now
But why stop with bikes? A company in India has developed a shoe insole that buzzes to let you know which way to turn on whatever route you’ve chosen. The device,  called the Lechal—meaning  “take me along” in Hindi—connects to an app that syncs up with Google Maps, allowing the wearer to take in the view instead of burying his head in a map or hanging on Siri’s every word.

The insole, which can fit into almost any shoe you own, can also count steps and tally calories burned.

It was originally devised with the visually-impaired in mind, but the Indian company that created the Lechal, Ducere Technologies, now thinks it could have broader appeal. It’s expected to go on the market next month at a cost somewhere between $69.99

Walk this way

The Lechal smart insoles work as a fitness tracker and aids in navigation as well

In The Wizard Of Oz , Dorothy owns a pair of magic slippers that help transport her from Oz to her home in Kansas. Imagine getting hold of a set of magic shoes, that would guide you to your destination without you having to hit Google Maps. The Lechal smart insoles, which translate to “let’s go” in English, have been crafted by an Indian company that does not use magic; instead, it provides navigation via vibrations on your feet.

Lechal insoles use haptic feedback and GPS technology to keep you going in the right direction. It’s the latest addition in the age of wearable technology, where a clutch of devices, from Fitbits to smart T-shirts, sensors that provide you instant information on your workout routine, your calorie intake, heart rate and so forth, seem to have overrun the planet. The Lechal insoles are essentially a pair of rectangular wearable pods that can be attached to the soles of your shoes. It works with an app that you can download on your phone. The app calibrates with the pods and helps you track steps and aids in navigation.

The pods come with a charging docket. The battery life of the pods is almost a week of regular usage—quite impressive in this day of energy-sucking apparatus. The product is an add-on to the device that was initially created to help visually-impaired people navigate city roads.
Once we got rid of our irrational fear of getting electrocuted, we discovered that the pods are rather helpful. The map feature on the app helps you pick a destination and gives you the estimated distance to the place. Once you manage to sync the pods with the app, it will use mild vibrations on your feet to aid you in navigation. So imagine yourself walking down a road. Now you need to turn left—your device will vibrate on the left foot. It takes a little getting used to, but you do, eventually.

In our review device, the navigation was fairly functional and worked well, vibrating slightly, depending on the direction. Unlike a Fitbit, that you glance at every once in a while to check your exercise status, this is much more helpful, as it remains inside your shoe and offers less scope for distractions. However, the syncing process was a tad less satisfactory. Often, the Android version of the app would stop syncing and start searching for the pods. At times, we were forced to bring the phone very close to the soles for syncing.

Another issue we faced was that the insoles seemed too large for our shoes and the pods often got disconnected from the soles. The thickness of the insoles also took some time to get used to. We eventually junked the insoles and attached the pods to the soles in front of the laces.

As far as wearables go, the Lechal insoles are not very expensive and are fairly decent for regular usage, though I could not see much help in navigation, apart from offering help in directions. However, one would hope that the company will add more features and make the insoles a little less thick for simpler use, apart from crafting a user-friendly manual as well.

Getting smarter
Smart shoe is an insole that is placed into a pair of shoes. The pre-programmed insole is able to connect to a smartphone via bluetooth and an application in order to select a destination and navigate the user.

Wearable Tech Is The New Smartphone

 

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Why shove it in your pocket when you can wear it? We won’t be surprised if you’ve ditched some everyday devices in favour of these feature-laden gadgets, some of which let you book cabs with a mere twist of the wrist. There’s even some that can be slipped into shoes, or worn to shade your eyes from the sun, or experience reality in its virtual form.

Apple Watch Series 2

After the first Watch, people expected the Apple Watch Series 2 to have a big enough upgrade. So does it pack all the punches that could make it a necessity, rather than a luxury? Yes and no. Yes, because there are various tech upgrades that we wanted, including a new waterresistant design, a GPS chip on board for tracking your runs, a swim tracker and a much faster processor. The expensive gold variant of the Watch is now replaced by a new white ceramic finish, while the Hermes band reappears to send the cost of the top-spec model further north (now you know about the ‘no’).
Rs 21,900 on amazon.in

PlayStation VR

Sony has been the pioneer of video gaming globally over the past decade or so, and is now planning to take on the likes of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in the virtual reality space. Its own headset, the PS VR, requires a gaming console, unlike the devices in competition that work on PCs or with smartphones. The headset is also much cheaper than its rivals and comes across as a robust piece of hardware. It will work only with a PS4 console, which is its drawback.
Rs 39,900 on amazon.in

GOQii Heart Tracker

The Californian company wants the heart rate tracking of their latest fitness band to be its biggest selling point, but we feel that it’s got much more to offer. It comes with an optional personal coaching subscription, which assigns you an individual trainer to keep you on your toes through the synced GOQii smartphone app every day. This is great if you’re in real need of motivation, but not so much if you don’t like getting nagged too much. That said, the band will also keep a track of your heart rate, daily steps, calories burned, distance covered, active hours and sleep patterns. What we especially loved about the band is that it needs no separate charger. The detachable core can be plugged into any power source via its USB integrated charger, and it lasts for more than a week on a full charge. Also worth mentioning is a decent sized screen that displays Whatsapp, SMS, Email and call notifications.
Rs 2,999 on amazon.in

Lechal insoles

Developed in India, these wearables function in a unique way. Two pods slot into the bottom of the insoles (which can be cut to your foot size) and connect via Bluetooth to the Lechal app on your smartphone, which has a GPS navigation feature. Once installed in your shoes, the left and right pods buzz depending on which way you have to turn, in a series of patterns that can be quickly learned, thus saving you from having to peer at your phone’s screen all the time. Importantly, the insoles allow visually challenged users to fully take in their environment aurally, without having to grapple with audio instructions on a conventional GPS system. The app also tracks the steps you’ve taken, the distance you’ve travelled and the calories you’ve burned. The pods have a claimed life of 15 days on each charge.
Rs 6,999 on amazon.in

Fitbit Charge 2

This sleek wearable has a number of useful features, at a price that isn’t stratospheric. Being from the Fitbit family, you can connect with other Fitbit-wearing friends and challenge yourselves to achieve fitness goals. The device itself tracks your heart rate, steps, distance travelled, floors climbed, sleep patterns, calories burned and number of active minutes, among others. You can also keep track of your fluid and calorie intake, set silent alarms (the unit buzzes on your wrist), see call/text/calendar notifications, practice deep breathing with a timed function and set different workout modes, apart from telling the time.
Rs 14,999 on amazon.in

Snapchat Spectacles

Snapchat (now Snap Inc) sprung one of the biggest surprises of the year after announcing its entry into hardware. The company’s first venture in this space are the Spectacles, which are essentially sunglasses with an embedded camera. They allow users to easily capture moments in their lives and then wirelessly save them to the app’s Memories feature. Just like the smartphone application that they originate from, the modern-day lure of the spectacles remain a mystery – but against the new features of Instagram Stories, the challenges keep mounting for Snap. Nonetheless, they exude a certain charm and also have a sense of swag about them, from the design to the cute robots you buy them from. So if you want to experiment with your specs next time you buy a pair, you know what to do.
Rs 15,700 on amazon.in