Smart Helmet

Inspiration: In the year 2014, 60% of bicyclist deaths occured when the rider was not wearing a helmet. And still, only 18% of bicyclists claim that they wear helmets most or all of the time. We are here to change that. The Smart Helmet ensures that you are unable to ride your bike, or scooter in this case, without a helmet on. This will keep riders much safer, and reassure parents that their children are safe while on the go.

Abstract: The Smart Helmet has four main functions, all of which work towards the safety and security of the rider. The first and main function of the helmet is the break that comes down when the helmet is not placed on your head. When you secure the helmet on, the break comes up and you are free to ride. Second, there is a buzzer that goes off if you attempt to ride the scooter, in spite of the breaks being down, without the helmet on. This buzzer serves as negative reinforcement and forces the rider to put the helmet on their head in order to stop the noise. Third, there are turn signals that are controlled by the handles of the scooter and go off on the back of the helmet, allowing the riders to signal when they are about to make a turn. Finally, at the front of the helmet, there is a safety light that automatically turns on when it gets dark outside. This allows the rider to see at night, gives others a way to see the rider at night, and does not require the rider to lift his or her hands off the scooter in order to turn the light all. All of this enhances the safety of whoever is riding the scooter.

Implementation: In order to connect the technological elements of the helmet and scooter, we used bluetooth communication that goes both ways: from the helmet to the scooter, and from the scooter to the helmet. The information that came from the helmet was whether or not a pressure sensor, placed on the inside of the helmet, detected anything. We used arduino to read whether or not the pressure sensor detected the presence of an object, in this case, the riders head. If the head was detected, the master bluetooth, connected to the helmet, would send a signal to the slave bluetooth, connected to the scooter. This would then tell the servo motor to rotate exactly 150 degrees, lifting an attached break up off of the floor. If, after that, the pressure sensor no longer detected pressure, it would send another signal, causing the servo to rotate back to its original position, in turn putting the break back down. This same bluetooth, from the helmet to the scooter, also controls the stopping of the buzzer. There is another pressure sensor on the handles of the scooter. If this pressure sensor detects hands on the handlebars and a low signal from the helmet, it will cause a buzzer to start ringing. However, if your hands are on the handles and the signal from the helmet is now high, meaning the helmet is on, the buzzer stops. When the helmet is taken off and your hands are still on the handles, the buzzer goes on again. The second bluetooth connection goes from the scooter to the helmet. This controls the turning signals. There are small pressure sensors on either side of the handlebars. If the one on the right detects pressure, it sends the message “R.” If the sensor on the left is touched, it sends the message “L.” If neither sensor is touched, it sends the message “N.” When the slave bluetooth on the helmet reads these messages, it will cause an output pin to turn high and cause the corresponding turn signal to blink. The left turn signal is two blinking red LED’s and the right is two blinking green LED’s. The power for each of these LED’s corresponds with different pins on the arduino, which are commanded to output high and low when certain bluetooth signals are received. The final component of our project is a safety light LED that sits at the front of them helmet. This light has no connection to the bluetooth. There is a light sensor that is also on top of the helmet. When the light sensor reading goes below a certain threshold, the arduino pin that powers the LED is told to output high. When the light sensor reading goes up again, the LED turns off.

Future Plans: The next step that we want to take for the smart helmet is an alert system at alert a parent or caretaker if the vehicle crashed. This system would use motion sensors to detect of there is violent motion of the helmet, followed by stillness. If this happens, we want to be able to automatically send text messages giving the location of the incident to a designated caretaker.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iVOASo0QFKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqa0z6uMe30&feature=youtu.be