A team of MIT students has won the James Dyson Award for their innovative E-BIKE called the Copenhagen Wheel. The design certainly complements the efforts of those seeking to add to their green travel miles.
"Smart, responsive and elegant, it transforms existing bicycles quickly into hybrid electric-bikes with regeneration and real-time sensing capabilities. Its sleek red hub not only contains a motor, batteries and an internal gear system – helping cyclists overcome hilly terrains and long distances - but also includes environmental and location sensors that provide data for cycling-related mobile applications. Cyclists can use this data to plan healthier bike routes, to achieve their exercise goals or to create new connections with other cyclists. Through sharing their data with friends or their city, they are also contributing to a larger pool of information from which the whole community can benefit."
The video shows how a monitor on the bike provides the cyclist with real time data and how the information can be shared on a Smart Phone.
It's interesting that the wheel can capture the energy dissipated while breaking and use it to accelerate later. The device is also quite easy to install on existing bikes. These students get an A+ for intelligent design.
