Samsung Smart Bike was created within the Samsung Maestro Academy project: the first digital platform where young talents can learn the secrets of world-famous artisans through technology. It was the result of putting together the world-famous bike frame builder Giovanni Pelizzoli with a young woman dreaming of opening her own bike shop.
Samsung Smart Bike aims to solve two main problems: bicycles being the most “unsafe” vehicles in Italy with the highest mortality index and, on top, young people refusing to use the appropriate safety equipment, considering it not fashionable or uncomfortable to use. Smart Bike integrates within its comfortable minimalistic bicycle frame and innovative smart components (battery, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Arduino modules, 4 laser-projectors and a digital-camera), all controllable through a Samsung smartphone.
Nobody has ever integrated such an extensive combination of components within a tailored frame, generating a responsive “safety environment” that detects ambient conditions and protects the driver in real time.
The idea was to control a fixed bike and its built-in smart components with a Samsung smartphone and a dedicated app, allowing the automatic control of four laser beams, a safety camera, and a GPS tracking system, offering innovative safety features.
Laser beams, for example, automatically switch on or off thanks to the brightness sensor of the paired smartphone, projecting a bike lane whenever it’s useful. It makes drivers mind the safety distance and let you be visible even around blind corners, preceding you with outstanding light traces. The aluminum frame itself represents an innovative solution. Its curvy tubes are able to neutralize any dangerous vibration to the body, providing an extra comfort even on discontinuous pavements of big cities. The mobile app turns innovative hardware into exciting features, such as the real-time video stream on the Samsung smartphone for the rear-view camera or the main social features. A GPS system, for example, tracks people’s routes and lets local authorities know which ones should be turned into real bike lanes.
The first engineered bike and its paired app were presented to one of the greatest design fairs in the world: the Milan Design Week, with the endorsement of EXPO2015 representative of Urban Mobility capturing the interest of important journalists.
Smart Bike has been taken under consideration for further development according to EXPO2015 scenarios, providing even more social features and possibly an Alarm system able to detect potential accidents, alerting local authorities for immediate assistance.
Samsung Smart Bike ended up on such an exciting result, that Discovery Italia decided to feature the whole building process in one of the 12 episodes of the Maestros Academy TV-series, generating a great conversation on newspapers, social media and TV programs. With more than 6 million TV viewers, 4.5 million FB users reached and 30 million media impressions -in Italy alone- the Samsung initiative became a big topic in major universities in Italy and even in the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.