When I brought the bike-seat-based LIDAR prototype home for testing earlier this month, I ran into a bit of a snag: the servo had stopped working. Apparently during transport a wire had wrapped around the servo and snapped one of the gears when it was turned on. I was unfortunately unable to do any testing with it, and had to bring it back to the shop for repairs.

In addition to the servo being replaced, the software was rewritten to further clean up the accuracy of the LED board and the audio chirps. Even the LIDAR sensor has a reasonable amount of "noise" to clean up to make sure there aren't any false positives with the system. 

This latest bike radar proof-of-concept was finally finished up this week and is ready to bring home for some testing out on the road! Here's a demonstration video by the Radicand guys:

More to come soon on how it holds up once I've taken it out for a ride in traffic.

I'm working with industrial designer Blake Johnson on product design for Velalert, specifically the casing for the radar and the user-interface for the system. Blake sent over some drawings of his initial concepts for the bicycle radar system earlier week. This first phase was purely an exploration of design concepts, largely ignoring the product development work going on with Radicand, focusing solely on the look-and-feel and the usability of Velalert.

Velalert bicycle radar will ultimately consist of two units: the sensor unit which will attach to the seat post and face backward, and the user-interface which will attach to the handlebars. The first drawing below is of the user-interface unit. The concept focuses on the aerodynamics of the unit, as well as the ease (and speed) of interpreting the information presented. While out riding, you don't want to be staring down at your handlebars trying to understand what is behind you ... that's a recipe for disaster. Instead, you need to be able to glance down and in a split-second, understand all of the information provided by Velalert bicycle radar. This is one of the key design goals of the user-interface unit for Velalert.

These next two drawings below show off the conceptual design process in action. On the left are a variety of different user-interface concepts; shapes, sizes, how it attaches to the handlebars, and what it looks like from various angles. This was the starting point for the drawing above. 

On the right are a variety of different concepts for the sensor unit (attached beneath the seat on the seat-post of a bicycle). This also presents multiple angles of the various design concepts, rear-views in the first two rows, and top-views in the bottom row. 

Now that this first design exploration phase is complete, next steps are to start nailing down the product specs with Radicand, then formalize the designs even further. More updates to come soon as progress is made both with Radicand on functional prototyping and with Blake on product design.

Radicand finished up the second prototype this week and sent over a video demonstrating the new audio alert feature added to this prototype to pair with the visual display on the handlebars. This is a LIDAR system set up on a rotating servo, installed into a Companion Bike Seat as a proof-of-concept. As objects get closer to the sensor, the screen will light up. When things start to approach too closely, it will start chirping to let you know that you might need to react.

I'll be picking up this prototype tomorrow and bringing it home for some testing out on the road!