Smart helmet maker Lumos is raising the bar on its own award-winning design with a new high-tech helmet that offers front and rear lights, turn signals, and even technology that responds to your basic hand gestures.
"Our mission is to make it really easy for you to stay safe so that you can make riding a bigger part of your everyday life," Eu-wen Ding, co-founder and CEO of Lumos Helmet, told Cheddar on Tuesday.
The Matrix is the newest helmet in the Lumos product line and started selling in select Apple stores worldwide on Tuesday. The headlights are 2.5 times brighter than the original, it has animated turn signals, and a corresponding app.
"The back is now a whole matrix, which is where the name comes from, of LEDs so it can make animated signals as well," Ding said.
"Wouldn't it be great if somehow the helmet could sense when you are giving your hand signals and just activate it automatically?" he asked. So that's what the company set out to create, with the new helmet featuring Lumos Gesture Recognition technology, which allows turn signals to be synced to an Apple Watch and respond to riders' basic movements. The advanced app offers a library of animations to choose from.
The high-tech helmet company is responding to the rise of personal transportation options like bike and scooter sharing. "When I started the company, like, four years ago, none of that was around, and very quickly in the last 18 months this whole microbility segment has skyrocketed like crazy," Ding said.
However, as more people get on e-scooters and bikes, cities often fail to keep up with the infrastructural changes needed to keep people safe.
"I think more people would do it if there was better infrastructure, if it was safer," Ding noted. "Hopefully, as more people get on the roads, the city will start paying attention to that stakeholder and start investing in infrastructure."
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
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At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
