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hammeraxe
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Paxovasa
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 Posted: 13:30 - 30 Oct 2010  Post subject: |
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That is what we do life savers for.
I would prefer to rely on my own eyes rather than relying on electronics 
Am sure I have read about a camera mounted facing the rear and it displays the image onto the inside of the visor.
Just like your idea I would find it distracting.
Just my opinion
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Clanger
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L4Isoside
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| Posted: 13:40 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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Also what happens if you turn your head? Blind spot etc changes and so then just distract me further 
Or as said removing the blind spot in a car.... much better IMO as a lot of non biker/ car drivers wont know or care about blind spots. |
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| The Shaggy D.A. |
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The Shaggy D.A.
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Posted: 14:20 - 30 Oct 2010  Post subject: |
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If only there were something available to let the rider see what was behind them. Perhaps some surface that shows an image of objects that are out of the rider's peripheral vision, maybe reflective, like those "looking-glass" things I've read about.
You'd make a lot of money with something like that. It would be a miracle. In fact I think I'd call it "mirare" from the Latin "mirari" - to wonder at.
Damn, I'm giving away too much information, I better go patent it before the bike manufacturers nick it.
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Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5 |
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| pinkyfloyd |
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pinkyfloyd
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| Posted: 14:27 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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Personally I think its a terrible idea. Any added light getting into the visor will reduce your field of vision. It will be like standing on stage with a spotlight shining at you. Anything beyond the brightness will be hard to see.
I'll stick to lifesavers in the dark if its all the same to you.
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Ichy
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Paxovasa
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| woll |
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woll
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| Posted: 14:50 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | If only there were something available to let the rider see what was behind them. Perhaps some surface that shows an image of objects that are out of the rider's peripheral vision, maybe reflective, like those "looking-glass" things I've read about. |
Reevu helmets....
https://www.reevu.com/index.asp
Saw them in the news of the world a few months back
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Current Bike- Suzuki DRZ400 SM K6
Previous bikes - Derbi Senda Xtreme50r, Honda CBR 125, Kawasaki ZZR 250, Yamaha DT125R, Suzuki Bandit 600, Gas gas ec 250, Honda CBR600FW
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| SirEdward |
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SirEdward
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| Posted: 14:50 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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I'd rather have airbag suit before anything else. Bluetooth flip-up and full-face helmets. Self-canceling indicators.
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weasley
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| blurredman |
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blurredman
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| Posted: 15:18 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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Yeah, it would keep flashing every time you passed a parked car
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Ingah
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| Frost |
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Frost
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| Posted: 15:31 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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As a business plan it would be perfectly fine.
As a product for development it has problems. How would it warn the rider without distracting them? How would it is powered without having to use batteries, or trailing wires? How would it be immune to passing close to objects without losing sensitivity to actual hazards?
Ultrasound is range limited and prone to false readings, hence cars have a load of these sensors along the back rather than just 1. Laser and infra red also have issues. I'm not saying any-things impossible, just that it would be more complicated than slapping on a sensor  |
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Bloke
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| TimNorwich |
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TimNorwich
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| Posted: 16:52 - 30 Oct 2010 Post subject: |
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Why not mount them on the bike? Obviously some idiots won't be able to mount them properly though. 
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Frost
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G
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Posted: 17:43 - 30 Oct 2010  Post subject: |
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Be much more useful if you could fit it to cars to detect bikes, connected to some electric shock machine, perhaps . |
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Frost
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hmmmnz
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Teflon-Mike
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Posted: 22:18 - 30 Oct 2010  Post subject: |
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| hammeraxe wrote: | Hi, everyone!
We're a group of university students and in our business module we are to write a business plan to bring an innovative idea to the market.
The idea we're working on now is basically a motorcycle helmet with integrated blind spot sensors. They would be installed in the back left and back right of the helmet and warn the rider with two LEDs (for left and right blind spots respectively) lighting up in his field of view.
So would you use anything like this? Would you consider the issue of blind spots on motorcycles to be worth tackling? |
What course? what Subject? what assignment?
Sounds similar to one I was given as an H300Mech eng 1st year in 'Business Studies'. We were 'assigned' certain products as our subject, or at least a product scenario... think I got the low cost 'wire-wool' exhaust catalyst!
If your tutor gave you the 'product' a blind spot warning system for motorcycles... he obviousely ent a biker!
Bikes DONT HAVE 'blind-spots'..... think about it? Whats a blind spot? In a car, its the area where you are 'blind' becouse theres a bloody great pillar holding the roof up in the way! On a bike, theres not a roof, hence no pillar to hold it up, hence no blind-spot. We pretty much have 360 degrees of unobstructed vision, if we bother to use mirrors and shift our heads!
But, as I recall, in another college assignment 'Envoromental Studies' we were given a number of scenarios for managing 'waste'... my group drew the short straw, I think it was composting! according to the blurb, we had possibly the most enviromentally freindly waste management project, but also the least cost effective.... but we had to market it....
Scored an A- for my proposal........ the 'A' for creativity, imagination & thinking outside the box, the '-' for blatently disregarding the 'implied' object of the assignment (to prove that the most eco freindly couldn't work in a market driven ecconomy)
After much waffle by the rest of the group, I put a simple hypothesis to them....... "This is ROLE PLAY.... we can do ANYTHING WE LIKE"
Birmingham city council, were at the time, getting into much trouble for thier contracts with Leigh enviromental, who were being critasised for flaunting enviro-regs and dumping a lot of pollution into the atmosphere from thier city centre incinerator.... I siezed on this nugget and suggested that our completely unviable eco-waste scheme had bveen sold to Leigh Enviromental, to operate as a loss leading possitive publicity stunt..... ergo, we could afford to loose the millions needed to put in a cost effective tender and hence we could submit a completely untennible ecconomic business plan, and did!
Remember, when your at Uni, whats written in the assignment brief isn't ALWAYS what the assignment is supposed to be.....
Another 'A' for inginuity '-' one was a value engineering excersize on a pairt of salter scales. Had to redesign them to reduce cost using the mechanical balence system, then do an alternative design using any system we chose to get the lowest possible product cost. My assignment presented the same design for both exersizes. Original scales had been constructed from sand castings and fabricated strip steel. I took out the strip steel and used castings throughout, and justified that it was a cost saving using the same system, but also least cost, if tooled for die casting.
Of course every-one else went and looked in Argos and designed something with an electronic load cell and an LCD watch display..... Which was the 'implied' object of the excersise.....
So being the perverse little sod I am, I put together a complete design presentation showing half a dozed weiered and wonderful alternative weighing devices, I seem to recall one of them used water in a craduated tube! NONE of them using a battery!
Then pointed out that the cast balence design was most siotable for the company that made it, as they obviousely already had casting facilities and they had staff used to bolting bits of metal together, so they didn't NEED to completely retrain their personel, aquire new skills and new technology and new machinary to start making stuff from injection mouldings and soldering bits of wire together......
Look at your assignment and think about what your tutor told you when they set it. WHAT is he looking for?
Does he REALLY want some wiered & wonderful 'new' invention, or does he want to see whether you can identify the uinique features, or whether you can identify the marketing possibilities, OR whether you can construct a sound ecconomic business plan for the manufacturing of the thing?
How much of the marketing structure is for the 'innovative idea', how much for anything else?
And how innovative is innovative, and define innovative?
Have you done technology push & pull yet? Is your idea a bit of technology looking for a use, or is your idea a possible answer to a REAL problem?
Personally, I dont think its either..... bikers DONT have a particularly big problem with periferal vision, most of us stay alive by having eyes in our arseholes. & Its not a bit of technology lookling for a place to happen, either. Proximity sensor warning systems have been around thirty years and found there way into all sorts of products from domestic burglar alarms to robitic equipment, machinary safety zones, to car reversing sensors etc etc etc.
As an 'innovation' all the idea has is that its a VERY small twist on the reverse warning system, or periferal vision systems ued on cars.
If theres a high weighting in the assignment score for the actual product and how inivative it is, I dont think it will score highly.
If not, doesn't really matter, but as far as your market research, some things you MAY like to consider, & research or confirm.
The motorcycle market is VERY small. There are more active participants involved in Golf or Angling. UK Motorcycle market is not very big, and its only worth AS much as it is becouse of the cost of motorcycles, and the new sales each year.
Average motorcyclist in the UK does NOT spend an awful lot of money on thier hobby. After the bike, they buy essential clothing, helmet, leathers & wet weather gear. Thats very fasion driven, and the biggest sector of the market. The 'average' biker actually spends MORE on hats, Jaket & Gloves each year than they do on parts & service spares for thier bike......
Accessories are a more specialised area, and its a very fickle and peculiarly low volume market. Stuff that has special 'purpose', like luggage, or heated grips sell reasonably well, but look at the price of a pair of throw-overs. Its not becouse the market will stand such high prices, its as often becouse the market simply isn't big enough to sell high enough volumes to drop product cost.
Widgets & Gizmo's tend NOT to do well in the M/C market, if it makes a bike go faster, or look cooler it can do OK, if there is a safety aspect, it CAN sell, but tends to come pretty low on any-ones priorities. Most people will put a tinted visor higher up thier shopping list than a sam-brown belt, tinted visors will sell about 10:1 ther number of high vis vests, even though they are three times the price.....
And the market has been dogged by pseudo-safety electrical widgets for years. Two that stpring instantly to mind. One I think was called the 'pulsar' or similar, & was a black box that made the headlamp pulse in brigntness to make Daylight Running lights more conspiciouse. Patented and bombed in market. One that actually sold was a little helmet LED brake light, switched on my an inertia sensor... was fasionable for a while, mainly becouse they were made to look like little cartoon charecters or cartoon bikes & could be fitted to your helmet or the bike.
If you want to score some brownie points for 'market research' in your assignment, little out of the box thinking, researching emminant failures in the market is as likely to be rewarded with good marks.
On which point, sticking up a question on a biker bullatin board, isn't. Its a 'quick fix' and most tutors will de-merit it as 'lazy'. You'll get more marks from actually going to a bike show or meet, and actually face to face asking a number of bikers, than you will from many, many more more or less credible internet forum responses.
(Lots of lecturers 'suffer' the internet culture, and essays based entirely on google research or bulatin board gossip. If you want to stand out, & win some marks for intuition & creativity, spend some time in the library, reading an old fasioned thing called books, or in the lab, or in the street, or where-ever, in the real-world with real people, doing some stuff the old fasioned way. Get away from the key-board... its a double edged sword!)
Cold Canvassing is still a major tool of market research, but direct consumer feedback is a very poor and highly innacurate. You'll get a LOT of possitive feed-back, but out of every 100 people that say that they would just 'consider' a product, you'll be lucky to get more than 20 or 30% to say they'd consider buying it.... and then only if the price was right...... then take those 25 people, and more than hal will back out when given a price, and of the 12 that are left, only maybe 1/3 about 4 people WILL actually put thier hand in thoer pocket and part with money for it, when its actually a reality, not just an idea.
And I know that, becouse I went bankrupt trying! I actually 'discovered' the disc-lock, twenty years ago, while I was at Uni, & put it on the UK & US markets, selling by mail order, growing a catalogue and reletively successful business while still studying, before leaving college to work on it full time as it had pretty much outgrown the spare bedroom in my digs!
Of ALL the innovative products that have come and gone in the last thirty odd years, it is about the ONLY one that has hung around and continues to sell.. unfortunately not mine.... but thats another story.
From hard experience, i can tell you that the biker market is a tough one. Performance sells. Fasion Sells. Safety does NOT sell willingly, it sells grudgingly. Novelty sells willingly IF its exiting, flashy or trendy, but has a VERY short market life. A novelty 'safety aid'..... it WONT sell... trust me!
If you want an assignment that will win marks, rethink it. Look carefully at the marking scheme, and where the points are.
If you have scope around your 'product' rethink it. Its NOt one that's readily marketeable, nor is it particularly innovative.
If the product isn't that important, fine, but dont rely on the bulatin board for your feed-back, and research the success or failure (particularly the failure) of other similar products.
For your business plan, even a 'poor' product, in a 'harsh' market can be made viable, BUT you have to look at the profis & risks, and show that there is a high return, low outlay pottential to make it worth while.
Something that might be 'key' in your business plan, is looking at product-life & competition, and showing the scenarios, of IF your product is successful, the way to capitolise on that success BEFORE competitors step in with copy-cat products, and or safeguarding your design.... patents are NOT the be all and end all, business plan should provide budget to actually fund any patent infringement.
(All well and good having a patent, but completely useless if you are bankrupted by court fees trying to get infringement compensation!)
THAT is something that is PARTICULARLY prevelent in BOTH the electronics industry, and the motorcycle market.
In electonic consumer goods, Ipod & MP3 players, touch-phones etc. some-one developes something, like the i-phone, within months the market is flooded by mega-feature touch-phones. In the automotive world, some-one designs an after-market sat-nav system, within a year, manufacturers have them as OE equipment, & theres sixty or more after-market competitors on the shelves.
In the biking wold, two that stick in my mind are the disc lock.... it was cheap clones that busted my bubble, while the other was teh fog-city-shield anti-mist insert, which was a product that we were given for evaluation & would have marketed had we not gone under, but similarly, has been immitated with variouse revisions over the years.
Look at your assignment. Thing about what you intend to submit. Then re-think and LOOK for your gimmick. If its not the product, then it WILL be something like considering patents or short market life, or the thoroughness of your market research and NEGATIVE aspects of market research.
On THAT topic, depending on the assignment and the marking scheme, its possible, infact LIKELY that your team COULD get as high, if not a higher final mark for submitting a proposal that suggests that your product is NOT viable, COULD be as much of a winner, than creating a fantacy business model with over inflated projections & optimistic costs and returns, just to show the principles. You DO the business plan, but show that the 'best' business plan is still doomed to failure...... shows that you CAN deal with the harsh realities of ecconomics and business, and MORE, actually have the capacity to accept failure.... at least of an idea.
Its a brave way to take an assignment. But it can work. Takes a lot of it though too. If the tutor sees that you have worked it through and realised the futility of your scheme too late, and spots its a salvage job, ratherthan going back to the drawing board and comming up with an innovation that WILL sell, you'll get slated.
If you take that route, what you have to do is put together something that shows as much or more work, and research to back it up, with a moral... something along the lines of..... after research we discovered that 90% of new products fail in the market place...... we wondered wh? What can be learned from failure? So we explored our product and looked at the reasons why this and OTHER products like it so often fail in the market place, rather than succeed, and concluded......."
And explore the business conditions and market factors that STOPPED you from creating a viable business plan, and present something 'revealing' to your class & tutor, making it a valid learning excersise... can score.
As is, a not so inovative, pretty unmarketable concept.... I really think you are onto a looser trying to promote it, and a submission that your tutor will probably rip to shreds if you try... at best, you'll get a 'D' for adequecy, going through the motions, and checking the right boxes, considering all that he wanted you to consider, even if not well. But, COULD with a little 'spark' be something that does stand out..... if you are prepared to put the work in AND think outside the box.
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Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?' |
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| The Shaggy D.A. |
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The Shaggy D.A.
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Posted: 22:36 - 30 Oct 2010  Post subject: |
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https://www.pollsb.com/photos/o/35199-sleeping_beauty.jpg
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Chances are quite high you are not in my Monkeysphere, and I don't care about you. Don't take it personally.
Currently : Royal Enfield 350 Meteor
Previously : CB100N > CB250RS > XJ900F > GT550 > GPZ750R/1000RX > AJS M16 > R100RT > Bullet 500 > CB500 > LS650P > Bullet Electra X & YBR125 > Bullet 350 "Superstar" & YBR125 Custom > Royal Enfield Classic 500 Despatch Limited Edition (28 of 200) & CB Two-Fifty Nighthawk > ER5 |
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Old Thread Alert!
The last post was made 15 years, 364 days ago. Instead of replying here, would creating a new thread be more useful? |
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