Given that wireless gear-shifting for bicycles has been around for the past few years, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone has now developed a wireless braking system. Created by computer scientists at Germany's Saarland University, the current prototype still looks a little boxy, but it does do away with cables and brake levers. According to computer algorithms that would normally be used in control systems for aircraft or chemical factories, the system should offer 99.999999999997 percent reliability - that means it would fail three times out of a trillion braking attempts.
The Saarland researchers have installed the system on the front wheel of a cruiser-type bicycle.
To activate the brake, the rider simply squeezes on the right-side rubber handlebar grip. This registers on a pressure sensor underneath the rubber, which in turn activates a small handlebar-mounted sending unit. That unit proceeds to send a radio signal to a receiver mounted on the end of the fork, which relays it to an actuator, which activates the disc brake. The harder that the grip is squeezed, the more firmly the brake is applied.
Presently, the system is able to stop the bicycle within 250 milliseconds. At that speed, a cyclist traveling at 30 km/h (18.6 mph) would have to react at least two meters (6.6 feet) before the point at which they needed to stop. The scientists aren't satisfied with this figure, and believe that it would be relatively simple to add anti-lock and traction control functionality to the system.
Professor Holger Hermanns, who is leading the research, has been in contact with bicycle brake manufacturers and hopes to commercialize the technology. Even if the Saarland system never makes it to the marketplace, he believes that lessons learned from the project could be applied to larger-scale, more complex wireless systems in which failure must be kept to an absolute minimum.
Funny, that\'s exactly how the old-fashioned brakes on my Trek hybrid work! And they\'re probably a helluva lot less expensive.
I once hit a car with my dad\'s tandem Schwinn (from the 60\'s) when I was a kid. Dang thing must have weighed 70 lb. It had rained the night before and I was going fast down a steep hill driving through all the puddles. When I finally saw I had to break there were no breaks because the rubber breaks were slipping on the metal rims from the water and mud. I really messed up that car...and my elbow. I turned the bike sideways and over sliding on the ground then when I hit, it quickly righted itself as my tires hit its slamming me into the side. I was a 190 lb 7th grader at the time. Must have be going about 45 mph. I was so shook-up I could not remember how old I was when the officer who came asked.
So I do like breaks away from the rim as it appears they have done here ;) They should just build breaks into the hubs. I had an old bike once that you just pushed the petal the other direction for breaking...very quick and reliable, but only the rear wheel...it was very prone to locking though. I can\'t see why they can\'t have something similar in two wheels where the one in the back is connected via a cable line to the front.
Uh, they\'ve had hydraulic disc brakes with hub-mounted rotors for bicycles for many years now. Where have you been? In fact, you probably won\'t find a mountain bike costing over $2000 that doesn\'t have them.
As for antilock, it\'s widely agreed that antilock brakes are much more valuable on two-wheelers, namely motorcycles, which is why the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recommended last year that they be made mandatory for all motorcycles sold in the US. When you only have two wheels, locking up one of them, especially the front, is a big deal. You write about danger of doing an \"endo\" over the handlebars if someone brakes too hard. Well, that would exactly be one of the benefits of antilock brakes, to keep that from happening.
Basically, absolutely everything you wrote says that you probably haven\'t ridden a bike in 50 years and barely know anything about them. It doesn\'t help that you call people idiots when you were trying to beat the yellow light, which happens to be illegal.
I personally would love to see a bicycle brake system, which is able to store the energy produced by braking the bike down - and release it just a few seconds later when the rider wants to accelerate again.