Ilumaware boosts car’s accident avoidance tech, helping them see bicycles better

A giant ”cell” of a bike reflector ?

What’s not to get? It’s a simple device that works in conjunction with the direction safety features are going with cars to make cycling in traffic a little safer. If this was going to market now I would have already ordered one.

Great observations! But this isn’t your average corner reflector. A traditional “throw away” reflector does you no good in the eyes of a car’s crash avoidance system. The size, material and angles are way off.
Every sq cm of the Ilumaware reflector is optimized to increase your radar cross section to the size of a car.
In a nut shell the car will see you sooner and make the necessary measures to avoid a collision or at least decrease speed before impact. Statistically speaking, the lower the speed at impact will drastically decrease the seriousness of injury.

Great idea. Similar to products used by small water craft to appear bigger to radar on the open ocean. It would be interesting if the return signal could have a defined signature for bicycles, like an ISO or IEEE specification. I’m guessing here because this is well outside my area of expertise, but I imagine vehicular radar systems in general are designed around avoiding other cars yet vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians behave very differently. Yes some are trying to auto detect cyclist; however, rather than guessing if an object is a bicycle a coded radar amplifier could explicitly indicate the sensed object is a bicycle and not a car or pedestrian. The collision avoidance systems could then be more fine tuned to avoid accidents with vehicles versus bicycles.

I find it really hard to believe it took massive engineering to figure this out, but I think attention turns to if they jumped on the patent too soon or at the right time. It could still be a while until crash avoidance systems become commonplace, not to mention at the extent where everyone will realize this is a mandatory thing.

Maybe I’ll shoot myself in the foot for thinking out loud, but I also imagined a mobile data network-based alert system.

It’s a retroreflector. It reflects most of the radar back in the direction it came from as long as it hits the inside surface of one of the reflector surfaces. As mentioned by others, similar devices are used on boats.

It’s seriously hard to believe the R&D claims. The shape is a standard retroreflector. Similar devices already work on this principle. Considering the angles are 90 degrees on a retroreflector, it’s puzzling that it was difficult for them to figure out the angles. If that’s the required size for the device to work effectively, I don’t think you’re going to see it on helmets and whatnot.

@fergus THANK YOU!! Can’t believe no one else said this! Not to mention Cyclists becoming complacent, because they have this Ilumaware widget, and getting themselves injure for letting down their gaurd.

Also, if it’s mostly about the metal and can be used without the lense, why are a majority of the pictures of/with the lense?

A lot of engineering did go into determining the size & shape. About 50 years ago. That said, there may have been some tweaks for the frequencies and relatively low power of avoidance radar.

@Dave B & @ fergus – two words: Cell Phone.

As others have said, the helmet seems to be the worst possible place – too high and is often moved so the reflector is not facing the source. I’d say the traffic side seat stay would be best. Static, at the right height, and the angle can be adjusted to provide the maximum reflectance for cars in the danger zone. If it were available today, I’d have one. Sounds like it’s time for a kickstarter.

Might work well to have this sort of reflector integrated into a helmet (ie, embedded in the foam at the factory) instead of sticking it on the outside. Then you could ensure it’s placed somewhere it won’t do too much harm in a crash…

Seriously, is there anything that Bike Rumor commenters can’t hate?

@AlanM They love bikes, so long as they’re made from steel/carbon/wood/bamboo/aluminium and do/don’t have thru-axles and use the correct 24/27.5/29/29+ wheelsize and do/don’t have disc brakes if a road bike.

Circle one of the each available options and be a dick about everything else. Afterall, if they don’t see an immediate use for it in their current situation it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and is therefore pointless and whoever invented it is a bad person.

“A lot of engineering went into figuring out the size, shape and angles, and the coating of the metal to make it work.”

Does it have to be metal?

Integrating this with the newer ‘superflash’ led taillights would be a killer product. Sign me up. I look forward to the douchebag in the BMW trying to buzz my elbow having his/her car brake for them.

@Psi-squared – That’s what I thought….. So that leaves the question of why it needs a bubble level?

Mounting corner piece of metal to a helmet is the absolute worst thing I can think of putting on a helmet. When you do get hit, the last thing to go thru your mind will be this thing.

@Kieth, Yes a visible light retroreflector, this is for radar.

this is what they dropped on the moon, so we could fire a laser at it and measure distance. that was over half a century ago.

90` angle corner reflector, as mentioned elsewhere… with a lens that “is purely aesthetic”

really has me scratching my head as to the “a lot of engineering went into it” part.