Almost half of the motorcycle accidents happen in urban areas at low speed; in most cases riders either have accidents on their own or are hit by another vehicle. During the crash, the rider is often ejected and can hit a variety of obstacles. In&motion is addressing all those challenges, forthcoming legislation changes and constraints by exploiting its expertise in intelligent and active wearable protection devices as the mantel piece for its innovative solution. The resulting concept is innovative not only in technology but also in the market reach strategy.
The efficiency of protective devices such as active airbags depends on one key parameter: the quality of the protection.
In&motion have decided to bring to market an intelligent airbag vest that would revolutionise the motorcycling market. Whilst there are solutions currently available, they all present very high cost-benefit ratios that explain why they have so far failed to become widely adopted. Developed so that the solution is optimised to meet specific end users’ comfort needs without compromising on optimum protection, the In&motion concept will bring a wide range of benefits:
• Strong protection improvements reducing the risks of severe injuries.
• In-designed and ultra-light system offering a perfect fit for the end users.
• Reactivation of the device using easy-to-handle consumables.
• Use of a smartphone platform to enhance the user experience and to allow continuous learning.
• A more affordable retail price.
The motorcycles market represents 33 million vehicles in Europe alone, 23 million of those equipped with engines over 50cc. Almost 70% of those are concentrated within only five EU countries: Italy, Germany, Spain, France and the UK. The direction given to legislation discussions by governments in these countries is set to further impact the market potential for intelligent body-protection devices for use in this motorcycling arena. Over the past ten years, major efforts to increase the safety of car drivers have led to a drastic 53% reduction of road accident fatalities. Over the same period though, the number of 2-wheel fatalities has only reduced by 20%. And yet, with the number of registrations continuously increasing, the overall picture looks particularly gloomy unless actions are taken at the legislation level. Based on this observation, the safety of motorcyclists is becoming a priority for governments as well as for insurance companies. As a result, a classification for body protection airbag systems for motorcyclists has been released in order to assess and evaluate the construction and performance of the devices available. A ranking (1 to 5 stars) is thus established and published for all commercialised solutions. This classification is the first step towards an overall scheme that encourages riders to be better equipped, beyond the legal pre-requisites.
Using airbags integrated into the person’s clothing and controlled by highly innovative accident detection and airbag triggering devices, In&motion revolutionises the intelligent protection solutions for motorcyclists thanks to three main novelties:
• an ultra-high energy absorption capacity;
• a much wider protection area;
• a system that uses auto-learning algorithms and that makes full use of smartphone and Cloud technologies.
The project’s objectives were therefore to develop an airbag vest suitable for this motorcycling application, to develop an algorithm with unparalleled performance, and to develop the data handling architecture to go with it. A field-validation involving 500 test-riders has helped consolidate the design of the complete product package, including the smartphone application and the data analysis platform that make this product so attractive. A partnership with the manufacturer Ixon has been developed, leading to a novel distribution model being established, whereby the airbag jacket itself is sold by Ixon and the detection system is sold or leased by In&motion direct to the end user. The first 500 products will be in the shops in September, followed by 4500 more before the end of the year, and another 5000 orders secured for early 2019. It has also been one of In&motion’s objectives to become a key player in European road traffic safety and standards committees.
