[Lamplighter]

Now here is an innovation that really sounds ingenious...

Bits
NICK BILTON
10/21/13

Start-Up Reinvents the Bicycle Wheel

It’s rare that a company comes along and reinvents the wheel, but it looks like that is about to happen.

Superpedestrian, a start-up in Boston, announced on Monday that
it has received $2.1 million in financing to help build a wheel
that transforms some standard bicycles into hybrid e-bikes.

Superpedestrian’s solution is to slip a motor into an existing analog product: the bicycle.



The Copenhagen Wheel replaces the rear wheel of a bicycle.
It includes a motor powered by a built-in battery and sensors.
When someone pedals with the new wheel in place, the bike uses sensors
and an app on a smartphone to measure the amount of effort the rider
is putting into each pedal. It then offers an additional boost when necessary.

One of the most interesting components of the new wheel is
that the rider doesn’t need to tell the bike when help is necessary,
the wheel just figures it out using the sensors and gives the bike a push.
<snip>
The wheel doesn’t need to be charged or plugged in on a nightly basis, either.
Instead, the wheel captures the energy from the brakes when a rider goes down hill
and then stores that power in a high-capacity lithium battery.
The motor also acts like a generator, creating power for later rides when the rider pedals in reverse.

The company said the wheel will last for 15 miles in each direction and will fit on most standard bicycles.

Now, if someone will just invent a smartphone app to stop the rider from doing stupid things in traffic.

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