A bicycle that reaches you with an SMS | Fusion - WeRIndia

Students from IIT Kharagpur have developed an amazing new invention: the driverless bicycle. It is made for the purposes of helping disabled people avoid trouble while steering or pedaling bicycles out of bicycle sharing stations, and to help improve the usage of bicycles to help environment.

The ‘i-Bike’, the brain child of Ayush Pandey and Subhmoy Mahajan has autonomous steering, braking, driving, and balancing mechanisms. They got the idea to develop this bike when the saw differently abled people who could ride bicycles struggle with getting their bikes out from the parking space. They wanted to make a bike which can be controlled wirelessly.

The user can ride it manually if needed as it comes with dual locomotion technology. The bicycle uses GPS co-ordinates for maneuvering itself to the destination received via SMS. It uses an Android app made for the “i-Bike” to work.

The bicycle uses laser and sonar based sensors to overcome any obstacles in its path. Based on the data it receives, the bike automatically calculates its motion. The bicycle is also has built-in commands to follow specialized bicycle lanes which are available in many countries with well-established bicycle sharing centers.

Furthermore, the bicycle is connected to a wireless telephone network which enables wireless control and live-tracking options. Whenever someone wants to use the “i-bike,” all he/she has to do is send an SMS to the bike using the Android app and pressing the option “call the bike to my location.” This sends the GPS co-ordinates to a server which is continuously accessed by sensors on the bike.

The information of location is received by the bike from the server and immediately the bike starts moving towards the destination. Once the bike reaches the destination, the user can add a new destination to reach there using autonomous steering. It has training wheels for the sake of balance and they can be retracted any time.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia