Las Ruedas De Copenhague

The Copenhagen Wheel
Description

Function
Developed by a small team of students at the SENSEable City Lab, MIT, The Copenhagen Wheel is a new emblem for sustainable urban mobility that improvesthe cycling experience, offers a cost-effective transportation alternative to cars and fosters a community of cyclists in cities. Smart, responsive and elegant, it transforms existing bicycles quicklyinto hybrid electric-bikes with regeneration and real-time sensing capabilities. Its sleek red hub not only contains a motor, batteries and an internal gear system – helping cyclists overcome hillyterrains and long distances - but also includes environmental and location sensors that provide data for cycling-related mobile applications. Cyclists can use this data to plan healthier bike routes,to achieve their exercise goals or to create new connections with other cyclists. Through sharing their data with friends or their city, they are also contributing to a larger pool of information fromwhich the whole community can benefit.
Inspiration
Visitors to Copenhagen are always struck by one thing: the number of people who cycle. However, although this city has the infrastructure andpolicies in place, the percentage of people who ride daily (36%) has remained virtually constant for the last ten years. Inspired by creating more livable and sustainable cities, our team began workingwith the municipality of Copenhagen in 2008 to investigate how small amounts of technology could improve the cycling experience and how the four main obstacles to getting people on bikes - distance,topography, infrastructure and safety – could be overcome. What has resulted is the Copenhagen Wheel: a new type of electric smart-bike which utilizes a technical solution for overcoming distance andtopography (a motor and batteries with regeneration capabilities that can provide riders with a boost when needed) and a real-time data network and series of applications to support infrastructure...