A design team from Sichuan University in China has come up with a lighting concept that could potentially have applications in the mountain biking world. It's a handlebar mounted LED projector, which they call Lumigrids, that projects a grid onto the ground in front of the rider. The idea is that changes in the terrain cause the grid to deform, and make it easy spot obstacles. According to the designers, Lumigrids would have three different modes that change the grid size - normal mode (140x180mm), high-speed mode (140x260mm), and team mode (300x200mm).
The concept is intriguing, but could it work for mountain biking at night? Modern lights are so powerful that it doesn't seem that this would be necessary, and the positioning of the grid could also be problematic. Plus, the speeds that mountain bikes reach and the types of obstacles encountered off road are greatly different than what a commuter would encounter on a paved road. Could some kind of hybrid light and grid system work, with the the grid projected further than the range of the beam? It will be interesting to see if this concept goes further than the drawing board.
It would be yet another weapon against the SMIDSY argument too, "I swear officer I didn't see him!"
"He has a four foot glowing blue grid around him, what the hell were you doing mate?"
"erm....."
Am I right?
Now we can all go full tron.
Tell me that wouldn't be cool.
(Think mercedes night mode dash board)
But, it all depends on wheel size anyways.
... and they are running flat bars and 26" wheels!
So do I go ahead and buy a 650b and Danny Hart 25mm riser bars and be trendy now, or do I sell my 29er and my 10mm riser bars for a 26" and flat bars and be ahead of everyone?
If I only I could see the drivetrain in that photo...