State-of-the-art sensors and intelligent software should make cycling “cooler” and safer in the future: prevent accidents, show the route, display messages or warn of dangers.
Philipp Wintersberger, Professor for Interactive Systems at the FH Hagenberg, is working on this vision together with a team from the TU Vienna. “In a survey, some cyclists were very enthusiastic about the new possibilities,” reports Wintersberger: It would also be really convenient if the right route wasn’t just shown on a tiny display, but appeared large and clear in the glasses. “Almost all of us wear glasses when cycling anyway, so there are many applications with future smart glasses,” says Wintersberger. In the future, new apps could be developed for glasses by Google or Apple, users download them and use them on smartphones like apps today.
Among other things, Wintersberger is researching solutions for augmented and virtual reality. Together with students, the team has also built a bike simulator on which you can cycle through a virtual city with VR glasses. This allows new security ideas to be tested. The simplest example is a display of the distance one should keep from parked cars on cycle paths in order not to be hit by a door that opens unexpectedly.
Blick recordings showed the researchers that cyclists, for example, can be severely distracted by text messages on their smartphones: “We could develop software that suppresses such messages while driving and only displays them when stopping at a red traffic light,” says Wintersberger. Navigation on unfamiliar routes is another focus, so the system could, for example, warn of danger spots. An online survey is used to find out which electronic aids cyclists really want.
Source: Nachrichten
