meet the married couple transforming cities with big data and bicycle lights

\"This is the graphics that really excites urban planners,\" said Irene mcalis, one of the directors of Limeforge, a technology company based in Northern Ireland.
She gestures next to her. by-
Side map on PowerPoint slides.
The two paintings look like graffiti, but they are actually the plot of bikers traveling along two roads in different parts of Manchester, central England.
The title of this slide is \"evidence showing the performance of the bike infrastructure\", which includes hundreds of blue and yellow lines representing the true journey of the sensor
Equipped with bicycles. On the left-
The lines on the map are jagged and chaotic-it\'s a standard road where cyclists mix up with cars, buses and running pedestrians.
Plot on the right-
The hand-painted map is bold, straight and unified-this is a road with a road edge --
Protect bike lanes.
\"You can see where the end of [is]cycleway]
End at Oxford Road, \"said Irene. “The speed [People riding bicycles
Down, there is less directionality as cyclists are now likely to weave around pedestrians, avoiding doors, etc.
For the planners who attended her speech, this is a vivid demonstration of the benefits of protected bike lanes.
Cyclists travel more straight, don\'t worry in front of them, and faster.
The blue and yellow trajectory map is similar to the real one
Travel in Google\'s era carowned crowd-
Waze, a navigation-based app, is available to cities through its connected citizen program.
It is relatively common for cities to draw data from millions of car trips, which provides information for planning decisions.
It is not common for cities to draw data from bike trips.
This data difference is a significant disadvantage for clean, sustainable cycling.
Without data, it is easy for planners to ignore cycling.
Investment banker Philip mcalis believes that if bike travel can be drawn like a car trip, the data will be useful information for urban planning.
Together with his wife, he created a technology company to install sensors on bicycles that can not only plan trips, but also measure road roughness, so that city planners can know where more smooth asphalt is needed and where potholes are being formed.
Road potholes cost the municipalities millions of dollars in damage to injured cyclists and motor vehicles.
However, in order to form potholes, the cost of monitoring urban streets is higher.
Few cities can find special potholes.
Measuring vehicles.
Most rely on sporadic, comprehensive, expensive visual inspection.
However, early identification of potholes can significantly reduce municipal maintenance and legal costs.
Since their lives often depend on it, cyclists are expert pit watchers and cities that use this skill can greatly reduce their costs for repairs and legal claims, which makes lime
The Kinks on the Limeforge plot are the places where cyclists make faceplant --
Avoid detours and point out where potholes have been formed.
Machine learning is created in 2013 (
The same year Google acquired Waze)
Do not sell ordinary old sensors to cyclists.
Instead, the company\'s accelerometer, gyro, temperature measurement and ambient light detection chips, as well as Bluetooth transmitters, are packed in small but very bright LED bike lights. Branded as See.
Feel, lights and 1
The company behind them has won a number of design and technology beginnings.
Including the audience magazine the economic spoilers Award, the UK highway safety innovation challenge, and the big chip award for the best Internet of Things project in partnership with BT, the British telecom giant.
The company also held three successful crowdfunding events, raising more than £ 290,000 in Kickstarter pledges on 2013, 2015 and 2017.
With the latest and brightest lights, the company is currently running another crowdfunding campaign.
The campaign reached its goal of 30,000 Kickstarter in just seven hours, with three weeks left.
Limeforge also raised funds from equal groups.
In 2016, it raised £ 711,000 in Crowdcube.
Traditional venture capitalists, including Techstart, have also invested in the company.
In 2017, the company raised another £ 400,000 from existing investors and Clarendon VC.
Made a beelinein earlier this year, look.
Sense became the official supplier of bicycle lights for British bicycles and signed a 4-year deal.
It is worth noting that Limeforge, which now has 16 employees, is also the official crowdsourcing data provider of the management organization.
The UK bicycle sport is based in Manchester and the city aims to become the most outstanding \"bicycle city\" in the UK \".
\"The plan was first proposed by Chris Boardman, who gave up profitable high profits
Spend more time on his new work.
As a walking and cycling specialist in Greater Manchester.
The former Olympian, whose 1992 gold medals have allowed Britain to succeed in cycling, unveiled a £ 1 map of Greater Manchester. 5-
Earlier this year, a billion people protected their bike lanes.
They were labeled Beelines. (
The worker bee has been a symbol of Manchester\'s hard work since 1842. )The bicycle-
Wow the journey plot created by city planners during a trial run of the city council.
Hundreds of cyclists, equipped with heavily subsidized lights, were asked to pair them with smartphones in order to collect more anonymous data. (
In the future, cities may reward cyclists for providing such rich data. )The See.
Sensors collect information about road quality, accidents and nearby
Not recognized, temperature and light level.
The cyclists who choose to take part in the Manchester trial are the people who go to work every day, not the cyclists.
Women account for 30% per cent.
The resulting plots show not only where cyclists turn, but also where they seem to realize Zen
Like a stable ride, they also show planners where the cyclists are riding the bike
Cut or not use the bike infrastructure according to the designer\'s intention. Using real-
Time data from the actual itinerary of daily cycling can have a transformative impact on cities that want to install the \"wishline\" infrastructure used by their target audience.
Born in Australia, but now a British citizen, SlingIrene, Singapore is the marketing and strategic leader of Limeforge, and Philip is the chief technology officer of the company. head and CEO.
They met through a common friend in 2001.
\"We made it, I decided to stay [for Love [in the U. K. ]
She told Forbes. com.
\"We lived in London for almost seven years and before moving to Singapore in 2008, Philip and I were married and had a daughter.
Philip, 44, works for Barclays Bank in Singapore, and Irene, 45, works as a human resources and management consultant in Asian citiesstate.
Philip studied electronic engineering and software engineering at Queen\'s University.
After graduating from college, he designed an air traffic control simulator for the United States. K.
Equivalent to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Before moving to the United States, Irene worked for the Queensland railway company in Australia. K.
\"It was in Singapore that Philip came up with the idea of bike lights and we decided to give up our successful business career and move to Northern Ireland and start looking at it. Sense.
Initially looking for better lighting to improve the safety of cyclists, it has now evolved into a bigger vision to help cities plan cycling more effectively by using data and insights.
See the Light.
The induction light is not only bright, but also connected;
They are also smart phone accelerators, which usually require 15 readings per second.
Sense lights can reach up to 800.
This requires a lot of data to be processed, but it also brings a key advantage: battery protection.
At the moment of artificial intelligence, the lights flash the brightest
Predicted dangers-such as at a roundabout, or when a motorcyclist is trailing a cyclist-but for the rest of the time, USB-
Charging batteries can save energy.
It feels like the light is still small, but there is still a heavy punch.
Their inspiration came from Philip riding among aggressive, impatient drivers in Singapore.
\"If there is MM space, someone will drive in,\" he said . \"
\"The drivers in Singapore didn\'t expect to pass a cyclist and immediately turn left into their driveway.
I think during the rush hour at dawn and dusk, when most small bike lights don\'t work very well, they will see me more easily.
\"The bulb moment-an LED bulb of course-was seen while riding a bike to work, and he was looking at a smartphone hanging on his handle.
\"I think: there are a lot of sensor technologies on these devices, and I was wondering if we could use them to develop a light that is bright when needed and save energy when not needed.
Light performance is usually a trade-
Close between high brightness, long running time and compact. See.
Sense light is small, smart to use the power supply, it will be very bright when you need it, but it runs for a long time.
\"When cyclists are close to the intersection, or when they enter the stadium, the lights also flash faster --
Tunnel Black Road.
\"Imagine you\'re at a roundabout,\" McAleese explains . \".
\"You will stop a little to see the exit and decide how to deal with it.
Sensor detection pause.
By vibration, the lamp then measures the grippier running surface commonly found before the Yield sign at the circular intersection. “The next tell-
When you start positioning yourself, the story sign will appear.
The lights now assume you are at the roundabout, both front and back, and they increase the flashing mode and brightness to increase visibility. ”Made in the U. K.
Limeforge\'s headquarters is located in an industrial park in new Townes, ten miles east of the city of Belfast.
The lights were made at a factory in Ballynahinch, a town 19 miles away.
The rural plant, owned by Nitronica, has been a contract electronics manufacturer for Limeforge since day one.
Nitronica is 10. 5-
Millions of PCB assembly experts and provide a pleasant service for the start-up of Limeforge
The former Plano factory was able to handle small ones in the early days-
Mass production. That See.
Induction lamps made in China are the key to sales-
Points, but there are other benefits to approaching, including reduced travel costs and greater production flexibility, as well as hands-on operations
Control of the manufacturing process.
With the company\'s latest Kickstarter campaign barricades more than £ 60,000 ago
Orders that have been proved to be in demand.
Sense light and Irene are pleased that Limeforge is one of the key companies in the emerging \"bike Internet\" space (
Others include Strava).
\"Cycling can help reduce congestion and pollution in the city and benefit health and well-being,\" she said . \".
\"As part of the campaign to try to influence this, we got a real buzz.