Interesting bit of kit: 'Meet the iGel protective system, an airbag cushion developed by German trauma surgeon Dr. Wolfgang Müller-Adam that cushions the entire body during an accident, including falls.
I'm thinking of this on motorbikes, but might work in a car and even on building sites in dangerous spots.
Helicopter parents can take note too ;)
http://www.techly.com.au/2015/03/02/igel-airbag-cushions-who…
With the other models you had to pull very hard to get the thing to trigger. Some of the riders on forums said they started to walk off while still connected and it didn't go off.
This one has 'supersonic sensors'. Like car airbags (with G sensors), things could still go awry, as they do occasionally with those - for one reason or another.
Heh. You'd probably appreciate a false trigger in an understandable situation as opposed to it not going off at all…!
@Pyro: It would depend. If these ever get commercially made (even in a cut-down form) they will also be hellishly - pyro-hellishly - expensive to replace. If your daily ride is Bimota DB8, maybe not an issue.
@Tas: yes mate - it'd surely be a one shot toss in the bin kind of unit. you can only hope they innovate to make it as inexpensively as possible and get wide sales to drive per unit costs down and get industries (where falls are a danger)/corporates involved. But that's getting towards abstract!
@Pyro: As we all dodge death on a daily basis, at least we can enjoy the cuteness of a real hedgehog
Price and bulkiness of the jacket usually kills the feasibility of these products.
lol looks rather hilarious. Clever though. Would it be a dispose-after-one-use sort of contraption though?
Reminds me of the Hövding Airbag Helmet.
While OzBargain accounts can apparently be re-animated, Ms. Frankenturnip (Non-Monster), airbag systems cannot.
Following your reanimation, however, you appear to be very happily involved with OzBargain. This is good. I trust that you are well.
Nope, Jar Jar. He was a flawed design, but remains an icon for recycling.
After a particularly bad fall, he is now used in the base of many potplants, for mightily improved drainage.
The pillion passenger would love it if it went off accidentally :)
The thing with airbag protection systems on cars is that the sensors are placed in a fixed location, very low possibility of false positives.
Bike riders move and shift every minute/second they're on the bike. I don't ride so I don't know the specifics, but I would assume any sort of radar or "supersonic sensors" would have to be mounted somewhere that will never have an obstructed vision (not so easy when the rider sits behind the visor, as the sensors will ultimately need to be on the rider).
Accelerometers are useful as a complementary data feed (vehicle stability control etc) but you can't rely on them 100% since the system has to interpret a series of data. E.g. How does it differentiate between a bike and rider crashing, or falling on the ground as opposed to a harsh but ultimately harmless pot hole? Needs to be 100% accurate otherwise it would be a technological and commercial dud (imagine it failing to determine a crash event and failing to deploy - false negative. Or deploying in a random non-crash event - false positive).
As a crude example, the Fitbit works on accelerometers, but it needs to analyse movement data on my wrist to determine whether I've taken a step or not. It's never 100%.
If you do the miles on a bike for many years, there is a range of surreal things that NEVER happen to drivers. I can't help wondering if those super sensors would trigger in the event of the following things happening.
I've been hit by a seagull in the chest, a flying bat in the helmet, had a car driver flick a cigarette out his window which landed INSIDE my collar, was rendered suddenly blind TWICE when a plastic bag appeared out of nowhere and more or less glued to my visor, had my full fairing bike catch the wind on West Gate bridge and move two lanes sideways without any steering input from me, and dropped the bike crossing tram lines (would you believe they put fine sand on those tracks so the brakes get friction).
Then there's the hazards that car drivers are far more protected from - rain, hail, smoke, the overpowering smell of a cattle truck, and wait for it - riding through a plague of locusts.
However, the all time scariest incident was riding along and seeing an ENORMOUS Huntsman spider on my visor, followed by panic when it finally dawned on me - it's on the INSIDE of the visor.
All those things are horrible!!
Pretty much the full gamut of horror. +1
That looks great but doesn't seem realistic.. There is a technology of padding that is like gel at its normal state but hardens on impact. Basically it is soft and flexible so it is great to put inside jackets and pants but it gets hard on impact so it is as efficient as the solid shells that are good for protection but uncomfortable to wear
Cool. It's certainly more sophisticated than those conceived by others in recent years.
In the event of a 'false-trigger' situation, things, however, could get interesting…