Kelly, Simeon (2023) Wireless Mountain Bike Safety System. [USQ Project]
![[img]](https://sear.unisq.edu.au/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text (Project – redacted)
Kelly_S_Hills_Redacted.pdf Download (6MB) |
Abstract
Mountain biking has always been considered a dangerous sport, as the rider not only has to navigate the trail safely but must also consider the other trail users. In some parks, two-way or multi- purpose tracks are often used. This adds an extra level of danger as riders need to be very mindful of oncoming traffic or hikers going in the same direction as them. According to a typology of bike crashes, 58% of crashes occur as the rider does not have time to manoeuvre and over 45% of them are crashes into another vehicle. (Billot-Grasset et al., 2014) This project focuses on the design of an indication system to alert bikers when there are other vehicles or cyclists ahead, especially when narrow and technically challenging portions of trail are concerned.
This project has an important contribution to make to the safety of trail users, without them needing special equipment or to remember to do something. Existing systems to help improve trail safety have required the rider to wear something to be tracked while systems for counting bikes have been focused on applications such as traffic monitoring and are not particularly useful at measuring direction or to a high accuracy (Ohlms et al., 2019). This system shall aim to provide a passive method to accurately determine to the presence and direction of mountain bikers.
The approach taken has been to identify potentially suitable sensor technologies and determine the requirements for their use in this context. Based on the preliminary analysis, three sensor types have been tested under constrained conditions. These were the vision, audio, and vibration sensors. All three were tested using a bike past them and had varying levels of success. The audio system was the only one which was able to pick up the direction of the bicycle however the vision was the most consistent at picking up movement. All three sensor types have possible ways of improving them, however the most recommended solution is the audio sensor. The major caveat with this is that is was only tested on one bike, and may not work reliably on all bikes.
The key outcome from this project is to be able to reliably detect presence and direction of mountain bikes on a trail. This system will be used to warn the cyclists of oncoming traffic and would be best suited to installation on both ends of a technically difficult portion of trail.
|
Statistics for this ePrint Item |
| Item Type: | USQ Project |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Current – Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Engineering (1 Jan 2022 -) |
| Supervisors: | Hills, Catherine |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical & Electronic) |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2025 23:30 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Sep 2025 23:30 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | mountain biking; safety system |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52962 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Archive Repository Staff Only |
