Demo Video

Introduction

The Bicycle HUD Capstone Project is a project designed to create a heads-up display for bicycles.

The project is designed to provide both riding and safety information to the cyclist in a way that is easy to read and understand while riding.

Components

The project is divided into several components:

• The HUD (Heads-Up Display)
• The Raspberry Pi Controller with Vehicle Detection and Computer Vision
• The Speedometer (Bicycle Wheel RPM Sensor)

The Component Diagram

The Physical Layout

The HUD

The HUD is a heads-up display that is mounted on the cyclist’s helmet. The prototype displayed the speed of the cyclist, as well as notifying the cyclist if there was a vehicle approaching from behind. However, the HUD can be expanded to display other information as well, including navigation and other odometry information.

The HUD was built using a small T-OLED display, an ESP32-C3, and a rechargeable battery. The display was then mounted to the helmet in a location that was easy to see while riding without obstructing the rider’s view.

The Raspberry Pi Controller

The Raspberry Pi Controller is the main controller for the system. It is responsible for processing the data from the various sensors and cameras, as well as controlling the HUD.

Vehicle Detection and CV

The major feature of our HUD system was vehicle detection as a safety feature for the user.

The system uses a camera mounted on the back of the bike, accompanied by an object detection model trained on the COCO dataset. The Raspberry Pi then used the video feed along with the object detection model running on a Google Coral USB tpu accelerator to detect vehicles.

Then, our algorithm would determine how quickly the nearest vehicle was approaching the cyclist, and notify the cyclist through the HUD.

The Speedometer

The speedometer is a simple device that uses a Hall Effect sensor to measure the speed of the bike. The speed is then sent to the Raspberry Pi, which then sends the data to the HUD.

Available Market

Target market:

• bicycle commuters, especially those in urban areas
• 786,000 daily bicycle commuters in the US according to bike advisor(2019)
• Overall 37% growth from 2019 to 2022

Safety around motor vehicles is a top concern among cyclists

• In 2021, 853/1230 cyclist death are from motor vehicle crashes
• Bicycle HUD provides cyclists with added awareness while navigating traffic

Bicycle accessories market projected to grow to $28.6 Billion by 2032

We believe that our Bicycle HUD has a large potential market, and could be a valuable tool for cyclists.

The Team

The Bicycle HUD Capstone Project was developed by a team of 5 students at the University of Washington. The team members are:

• Max McKelvey (me)
• Katharine Lundblad
• Esther Huang
• Oliver Burton
• Nick Langhorne