Bicycle Safety Kit

Biking is increasing rapidly and electronically driven bicycles are getting popular. But lots of people do not care about safety while riding a bicycle. The Bicycle Safety Kit increases the safety of bikers and pedestrians that cross the bikers' way. It consists of two parts: (1) An Android smart-phone app and (2) the Safety Jacket that is a reflective vest with LEDs for speed indication and a vibrator to signalize speed limits. The app does the GPS-tracking and controls the jacket's devices wirelessly via Bluetooth. The whole technical realization is done with the Amarino Toolkit that connects a smart-phone with Android and the microcontroller Arduino. For the evaluation a biker wore the Bicycle Safety Kit while riding on a bikeway and we observed and interviewed pedestrians. At a traffic light we asked bikers about their opinion regarding the Bicycle Safety Kit. Finally we found out that the awareness of speed can be increased with the Bicycle Safety Kit both of the biker and the pedestrians. But there is need for further development regarding the design, the GPS-latency and the visibility of the LEDs.

More on http://lex.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/btd2011/index.php/Category:Project_group1

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28.04.2011

Robotic Sunflower

: Robotic Sunflower with light source

This is my "Robotic Sunflower" which I created during a workshop of the Metalab with Daniel Schatzmayr in Vienna in April 2011. Like a real sunflower it follows the sun or in that case any light source automatically. It consists of 1 Arduino Duemilanove, 3 servos, 5 solar-cells in the bloom and some wires. The structure is made of acrylic glass. I did the whole assembling and Arduino programming by myself.

Thanks to Magdalena Schindler who made the pictures and video for me at home during my stay at the University of Nottingham.