Christine Outram and a team of MIT students are the US winners of the James Dyson Award competition with their Copenhagen Wheel – a wheel that turns a regular bike into a smart, electric hybrid.
This teched-out wheel allows riders to capture the energy dissipated
when breaking and cycling and save it for when they need a boost. Like
most cutting-edge technology, the Copenhagen Wheel is controlled through
a rider’s smart phone.
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 improves the 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 quickly into 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 hilly terrains 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 from which the whole community can benefit.
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