New Bike Designs

choi

(1) Michael B Farrell, Electronic Wheel’s Brain Boasts Smartphone Savvy; Cambridge start-up hoping to attract urban tech lovers. Boston Globe, Oct 22, 2013.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/busin ... ckbsgy2J/story.html

Quote:

“Superpedestrian [the company that is selling the Wheel] will begin taking orders for its wheel at the end of November and expects to ship the first ones next spring. The 9.5-pound wheel will sell for under $1,000 and is designed to fit most bike frames. Initial orders will be for just the wheel, but the company expects to offer it on a complete bicycle setup.

"But it is not just for helping during tough climbs. With a smartphone app, riders can also control the amount of resistance from the motorized rear wheel so it becomes even harder to pedal — if just riding the bike is not enough exercise.

"The Copenhagen moniker comes from the fact that the wheel was initially introduced at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark. The idea, developed at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, was not just to build a smart bicycle wheel, but to develop a technology that would encourage more people to ride bikes.

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest. Instead, read the Web page:

The Copenhagen Wheel. MIT Media Lab, undated.
http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/wheel.html
(b) Nick Bilton, Start-Up Reinvents the Bicycle Wheel. New York Times, Oct 21, 2013 (blog)
has an interesting title, but there is no need to read it.

choi

(2) Based in Emeryville, California (a small city sandwiched between cities of Berkeley and Oakland), Revolights offers LED lights on bike wheels, programed so that the while light in the front wheel will illuminate the road ahead, whereas the red light in the back wheel will allow others to see the bike--from 360 degrees.

Revolights
http://revolights.com
(a) View the video clip in the home page.
(b) Click the tag “How it works” in the top horizontal bar. The new Web page says, “A fork-mounted magnet and an integrated accelerometer provide speed and orientation data to the rings, allowing the LEDs to illuminate only when oriented at the front or rear of the bicycle.”