RING OF (VIRTUAL) STEEL

BIKES GET CONNECTED USING TECH DEVELOPED FOR CARS

It seems obvious: if connected cars and bigger vehicles are safer, why not extend that safety to other road-users, specifically, bikes? That’s why radar technology initially developed for use in driverless cars has been adapted for motorcycles.

Vehicle-to-vehicle communications developer Cohda Wireless, from Australia, has partnered with Bosch, Ducati and Autotalks on a “digital protective shield” that warns riders of nearby traffic before they see oncoming cars. Bosch is commercialising the technology in Ducati production bikes, but the radar could also be retrofitted to any car or motorcycle.

According to Bosch, motorcyclists are about 18 times more likely to be killed in a collision than car drivers. However, it claims that the new radar could prevent nearly one in three of all motorcycle accidents. Production of the technology is being driven by a proposed mandate from the United States Department of Transportation that would mandate vehicle-to-vehicle radars for all new light vehicles.

According to Cohda Wireless managing director Paul Gray, the radar is the next step in safety from seatbelts and air bags. “Technologists have gone as far as they can in terms of minimising harm during an accident and now it is about avoiding the accidents before they even happen,” he said. “If a motorcyclist is riding down the street, it will be alerted when a car turning on to the same road creates an opportunity for an accident. This can also happen when the car moving on to the road is not visible to the rider. The radar will alert drivers who are changing lanes if someone is in their blind spot, which is quite an issue for motorcyclists.”

Gray said the technology would eventually be in every autonomous car as well.

Cohda commands about 60 per cent of the vehicleto-vehicle communication market. The system uses the public WLAN standard (ITS G5) as the basis for the exchange of data between motorcycles and cars. Information such as vehicle types, speed, position and direction of travel will be transmitted at a rate of up to 10 times a second to ensure a high level of accuracy.

To allow riders and drivers who are further away to reliably receive the necessary information, the technology makes use of “multi-hopping”, which forwards the information automatically from vehicle to vehicle. It can be transmitted to any car or motorcycle within a several hundred-metre radius.

The new system is combined with a 3D map, which provides highly accurate positioning and instantly detects vehicle speeds. It can also send notifications through a rider’s helmet using stereo sound.

Bosch board member Dirk Hoheisel said the added ability of letting vehicles communicate better between themselves took road safety to the next level.

“We let motorcycles and cars talk to each other, creating a digital protective shield for riders.”

Last year, South Australia became the first state in the country to introduce laws allowing for trials of driverless cars on open public roads. Cohda Wireless’ technology has been trialled on the closed Southern Expressway, on the outskirts of the South Australian capital Adelaide, but in the next phase of testing it will be trialled in the city’s CBD and on other urban roads in the coming months.

A recent example of Bosch transferring its technology from cars to bikes is its MYSPIN route information interface – which mirrors smartphone contents to a vehicle display – was adapted last year for twowheelers. According to Bosch, in the system development stage it paid special attention to road safety and the avoidance of rider distraction.