Top TechTop Tech #96: Air-free Tires, Smart Steering Wheel, lit-up bike helmet
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Tuesday’s Top Tech:
• Tires Never Go Flat
• Drowsy drivers steered by smart wheel
• Bike helmet with brake lights and turn signals
Tires Never Go Flat
Just last month, my girlfriend’s car got a flat tire. You’d think we’d be past that problem by now…
Maybe soon we will: Hankook Tire of South Korea is developinga solid tire, the iFlex.
The fifth-generation airless tires do not require air pressure as ‘geometric shapes built into the material provide the bounce and springiness normally provided by air pressure,” Wired reports.
The company says the tires matched conventional tires in terms of performance.
Drowsy drivers steered by smart wheel
Ever dozed off at the wheel? I have (decades ago). New technology might help prevent that from occuring again: a smart steering wheel that detects how alert you are.
Simply, the system will alert you when your grip grows weaker or even if your hands stop moving about the wheel as much as they had earlier, when it calibrated your standard steering movements.
Guttersberg Consulting co-developed the fatigue-sensing steering wheel. Its strip of sensors can be applied to existing steering wheels.
Bike helmet with brake lights and turn signals
Just about no one on a bicycle uses turn signals, and who would attach lights to their brakes?
But now a new helmet design could do that for you, even sensing when you slow down. And hey, it comes with headlights.
The Lumos helmet, now on Kickstarter here, has a mounted wireless remote to activate the turn signals. The automatic brake lights are triggerd by the integrated accelerometer that “senses when you slow down, and automatically turns all the rear lights bright solid red to signal that you are braking.”
