Protect Your Smarts, Build a Smart Motorcycle Helmet

Wearing a motorcycle helmet is a great idea. But a helmet could be so much more. Matt Kopper, Karl Akerberg, and Valerie Cochrane, three students at Colorado State have improved on the typical motorcycle helmet design with a handful of 'smart' features.

To allow better airflow to the wearer the helmet incorporates an LED touchscreen, mounted in the chin, that is connected to two servomotors that allow the wear to control the visor. The screen can also be used to display road maps.

The team also added two additional safety features. The first is a blindspot detection system. This includes two ultrasonic sensors that communicate with two buzzers and two small LED lights, located on the right and left side of the helmet. The ultra sonic sensors are programmed to detect an object in the right or left blind spot. If something is detected in its range (lets say on the right side) then the right ear buzzer will sound along with the light in the lower right of the users peripheral vision lighting up; same goes for the left side.

The other safety feature is an ambient light detection system, where a photoresistor is fixed on the top of the helmet, which corresponds to light or dark. If it detects no light (darkness) four LED lights mounted on the rear of the helmet light up. This allows for riders to be more visible during the night or even on cloudy days.

An Arduino Mega is used to control the touchscreen while a PIC 16F88 is used for the other components on the helmet. Power for the entire device includes eight AA batteries and a small handheld power source.

PLEASE NOTE: This helmet is a prototype project and should not be used on the road or in any live traffic conditions.

Download the Arduino Mega source code

Download the PIC source code

Scroll through for Part List, followed by Build Instructions.

Parts List