Coming to your bicycle: wireless braking?
This article was written by Steve Almasy
of CNN.com “Holger Hermanns wasn’t
out to change the way people bike.” Hermanns, who is a computer scientist whose
mission in life “is to make things safer through well-prepared wireless
systems, cycling is just a hobby.” He developed the wireless braking system and
it was not until word-of-mouth when he started get national recognition.
Hermanns made the braking system by simply
putting sensors on the handle bars and two sensors on each fork on the front of
the bike as well as the back of the bike. There is a battery that supplies
electricity to the system. Also, the amount of pressure that you grip the
handle bar brake with is important. The sensor then determines how fast you
want to come to a stop by the pressure you put on the handle bar. To engage the
back brakes you simply just pedal in an opposite rotation.
He choose a bike to perform this
because it was in expensive and easy to install and easy to determine their calculations.
He also said, “It was much safer to crash than say a car or a train”.
Once calls kept coming in from
companies and local bike shops is when he realized the big picture of his
invention.” The wireless brake works with 99.9999999999997% reliability”,
according to a news release from Saarland University.
Bikes are just a prototype of what he
looks to do for the wireless technology. He hopes in a years he can develop a wireless
braking system to implement on trains. Hermanns states, “a wireless system could
allow more communication between track and trains, and prevent such unnecessary
braking. Sensors will also measure brake performance.”
Also, he feels it will impact the
daily bike users who use them to go to work and not as helpful towards
competitive bike racers as the system weighs too much.
Overall, I feel that this invention
shoes very creativity I don’t see how strong of an impact it has. The idea of
having no wires on a bike sounds convenient and with no wires you wouldn’t have
to worry about them getting in the way or trying to fix or replace them if they
break. Who knows though, maybe it’s the start of a wireless
generation and we might look back and say Holger Hermanns started the movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment