Color us a yellow shade of mendacious, but when we designed something that works 99.999999999997 percent of the time, we’d probably round off and provides ourselves an enormous ol’ 100% A+. We’d probably throw in a smiley faced sticker, too. Computer scientist Holger Hermanns, however, is a way more honest man, that is why he’s willing to confess that his new wireless bike brake system is prone to outright failure on about three out of each trillion occasions. Hermanns’ concept bike, pictured above, may look pretty standard at the beginning glance, but take a better examine the perfect handlebar. There, you will find a rubber grip with a pressure sensor nestled inside. Whenever a rider squeezes this grip, that blue plastic box sitting next to it should send out a signal to a receiver, attached to the bike’s fork. From there, the message might be sent directly to an actuator that converts the signal into mechanical energy, and activates the brake. Better of all, this complete process happens will take just 250 milliseconds of your life. No wires, no brakes, no mind control . Hermanns and his colleagues at Saarland University at the moment are engaged on improving their system’s traction and are still in search of engineers to show their concept right into a commercial reality, but that you would be able to wheel past the break for more info, within the full PR.
13 October 2011 University Saarland
Computer scientists at Saarland University developed a wireless bicycle brake and demonstrated its efficiency on a so-called cruiser bike. Furthermore, they confirmed the brake system’s reliability through mathematical calculations which are extensively utilized up to speed systems for aircraft or chemical factories.
The cruiser bike is more just like an effortless Rider motorcycle without an engine block than it’s to a conventional bike. However, taking a look at the straight, elongated stem, it’s readily apparent what makes the newly developed system so special. The bicycle has neither a protruding brake lever to manipulate front brake, nor a brake cable snaking down the frame.
However the wireless bicycle brake represents so much more than simply a tutorial gadget to the scientists. Professor Holger Hermanns, who holds the chair of Dependable Systems and Software, and who developed the wireless bicycle brake along with his group, explains: “Wireless networks are never a fail-safe method. That’s a fact that’s in keeping with a technological background.” Nonetheless, the fad is to establish wireless systems that, like an easy bicycle brake, need to function on a regular basis.
“Within the field of the longer term European Train Service, for instance, concrete plans exist already,” Hermanns reports. Furthermore, he says that train and airplane experiments are far too sophisticated, and will even endanger the lifetime of people in case of malfunction. Therefore, the Saarland computer scientist’s mathematical methods should now verify the proper function and interaction of the components automatically. “The wireless bicycle brake gives us the required playground to optimize these methods for operation in a lot more complex systems,” Hermanns adds. Therefore, his research group examines the brake prototype with algorithms that normally are utilized in control systems for aircraft or chemical factories. Because of this, they discovered out that the brake works with 99.999999999997 percent reliability. “This means that out of 1000000000000 braking attempts, we’ve three failures,” Hermanns explains and concludes: “That isn’t perfect, but acceptable.”
To brake with the wireless brake, a cyclist has simply to clench the rubber grip at the right handle. The more tightly the grip is clenched, the harder the disk brake at the front wheel works. It sort of feels as though a ghost hand is in play, but a mixture of several electronic components enables the braking. Integrated within the rubber grip is a pressure sensor, which activates a sender if a specified pressure threshold is crossed. The sender is integrated in a blue plastic box that’s the dimensions of a cigarette packet and is hooked up to the handlebar. Its radio signals are sent to a receiver attached on the end of the bicycle’s fork. The receiver forwards the signal to an actuator, transforming the radio signal into the mechanical power through which the disk brake is activated. To improve reliability, there are additional senders attached to the bicycle. These repeatedly send an identical signal. On this way, the scientists hope to make sure that the signal arrives on the receiver in time, even when the relationship causes a delay or fails. The pc scientists at Saarland University found that increasing the selection of senders would not bring about increased reliability. “Whether it is not configured correctly, it’s possible that three out of 5 braking attempts fail,” Hermanns says.
Its current configuration enables the cruiser bike to brake within 250 milliseconds. Because of this at a speed of 30 kilometers per hour, the cyclist has to react two meters before reaching the harmful situation. However the Saarland University computer scientists are usually not satisfied with this functionality. “It isn’t difficult to integrate an anti-lock braking system and traction control. That takes very few adjustments,” Hermanns explains. After first talks with bicycle brake manufacturers, Hermanns is seeking engineers who will realize the concept that of a wireless bicycle brake.
Researching the wireless bicycle brake was funded throughout the special research field
“Automatic Verification and Analysis of Complex Systems (AVACS)” by the German Research Foundation. Its results are documented inside the scientific paper “A Verified Wireless Safety Critical Hard Real-Time Design,” published by the Institute of electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
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