REDO hw 8

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.