New Bike Uses Smart Phones and Lasers to Keep Riders Safe

If you ride your bike on a regular basis, chances are you've had a few close calls with speeding vehicles or maybe even an impromptu meeting (or two) with the pavement.

If you ride your bike less often, this improved design may be even more important: it could save your life.

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Famed Italian bicycle craftsman Giovanni Pelizzoli and Alice Biotti, a student at Samsung's Maestros design school, teamed up to make a smart bike that could save lives of both experienced riders and those taking their bicycles on busy roads for the first time.

To create the Samsung Smart Bike, the artisans began by crafting a frame that would absorb violent road vibrations. "Curvy aluminum tubes are able to neutralize the most dangerous vibration to the body, providing an extra-comfort even on big cities discontinuous pavements," the Maestro site explains.

But a less jarring ride is only part of the safety formula.

The bicycle mount is designed to magnetically hold the Samsung smart phones, and the rider can easily switch the coolest option on or off: the lasers.

Bikers are inherently safer when they stay within their bike lanes, but designated cycling lanes aren't found on most roads. This was, in-part, the inspiration for the project. According to Italy's National Institute of Statistics, bicycles are the most “unsafe” vehicles, with the highest mortality index. So the Italian design team realized drivers will likely see bikers better -- especially at night -- if they travel with their own, ever-present bike lane lines, outlined by the bike-mounted lasers.

The lasers are mounted on the bike and project a cyclists lane (Image source: Samsung Maestro Academy)

The bicycle is fully integrated with the Samsung smartphone,  and the four laser projectors are controlled by an Arduino module; the lasers project onto the road to indicate the biker's lane and alert other motorists on a blind turn. The lasers are automatically toggled on/off depending on the light conditions, according to Gizmodo.

Pelizzoli and Biotti then added the mounted a rear-facing camera that relays a live feed to the mounted smartphone of the motorists approaching the cyclist from behind, helping to avoid accidents due to unexpected turns or movements from the bike.

The rear-facing camera uses Bluetooth technology to project an image to the phone's screen (Image source: Samsung Maestro Academy)

Cyclists can keep an eye on who is approaching them from behind without having to turn around (Image source: Samsung Maestro Academy)

It is unclear whether the bicycle will go into full production for sale yet, but it was presented at the 2014 Milan Design Week.

Check out how the bike looks on video, here:

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(H/T: Gizmodo)

Follow Elizabeth Kreft (@elizabethakreft) on Twitter.