How a Bike Safety Bot Became a Building Block for Computer Engineers
Artificial intelligence that perceives the environment is becoming more common in factories, fields, streets and sidewalks.
iPhone screenshots show how a “Commute Guardian” using spatial AI recognizes and responds to a vehicle coming within dangerous proximity of a cyclist.
Photographer: LuxonisIn 2017, Brandon Gilles left his day job as an electrical engineer with a notion to build an augmented reality laser tag game. But that plan kept getting interrupted by tragic news: In the span of a year, four people he knew were clipped by cars while riding their bikes. Three of the collisions resulted in severe injuries, and one was fatal. All had been struck from behind.
So Gilles set out to build a bike light that could help prevent such collisions, starting from the same place as his laser tag idea: the emerging field known as “spatial AI,” where artificial intelligence meets the physical world. On the back of a milk crate, Gilles pieced together a prototype that used depth-sensing stereo cameras and computer vision to estimate the speed and distance of approaching vehicles. Programmed with AI, the “Commute Guardian” could recognize when a collision was imminent, emitting audio or visual alerts so that the cyclist could swerve away.