BMW Aims To See And Hear The Road Ahead
So BMW are at it again with the technology - they've just filed a patent for road sensitive traction control system to be ready for 2021
It works via a set of cameras and acoustic sensors mounted on the bike. The cameras will be fitted to the front forks, front fairing and mudguard and acoustic sensors on the front and rear lower fairing – so it will be able to see and hear the road!
As it travels forward the bike sensors will continuously scan the upcoming road, feeding the data into a control module on the bike, which uses a computer program to build a 3D image of the road ahead.
The data recorded by the sensors will be compared with a library of road surface images stored in the computer it will then automatically adjust the traction control and ABS accordingly for the safest and best riding.
The acoustic sensors are a particularly clever addition for gleaning information, as the sound of the road surface while riding varies a lot, rough bumpy roads sound very different from smooth well maintained tarmac. Thus the sensors can work out what the road surface is doing which could be really helpful if the road is pitted or it is wet and dangerous.
Extra eyes and ears on the road should be helpful to the rider and with the quick mechanical adjustments from the on-board computer perhaps this will be a useful safety feature of bikes in the future.
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Comments:
06/10/20 - How about a device fitted to their cars to stop them pulling out in front of bikes and to stop them overtaking when there is not a enough room causing me to brake hard to avoid a head crash. Mercs desperately need this too.
05/10/20 - How about we leave things like seeing and hearing the road ahead to the rider? Putting this kind of "safety" technology into bikes is pointless. If we really cared about safety, we wouldn't ride in the first place. Stop wasting money, we have literally a couple decades left before combustion engines are banned outright and you're wasting r&d on this?
05/10/20 - I have a simple method I use on my old bikes...
If I don't crash, I'm going too slow.
If I do crash, I'm going too fast.
05/10/20 - Something else to go wrong for the dealer to fix at an extortionate rate...
05/10/20 - Same as above, if you can't be bothered to pay attention to what is going on then get the bus
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