Startup given grant for motorcycle helmets with GPS, voice-control

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A Russian startup has been given a $300,000 (14.7 million ruble) grant towards the development of motorcycle helmets with built-in voice control and GPS navigation systems.
The company, Livemap, announced that it had received funding from the Russian Ministry of Science and that it planned to unveil a prototype unit in the spring. The helmet, which displays directions directly in a rider’s field of vision, is expected to go on sale in the US next summer.
According to TechCrunch, the device – which was involved in the website’s “hardware battle” at the most recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) – was designed so that drivers did not have to look away from the road or use other devices while operating their motorcycles.
An early version, demonstrated by the company in January, was already transparent enough to display a map without blocking a person’s vision of the road, the website said.
Livemap CEO Andrew Artishchev told TechCrunch that the company is currently working on developing pre-production prototype optics made from aspheric lenses. Those optics, he said, will be smaller, lighter and less expensive than multi-lens designs.
The company explained that using aspheric optics was difficult, and that a lot of work had to be done before the units could be mass produced. Unlike products from companies such as Nikon and Canon, which Livemap said only use one or two aspheric lenses and four to seven spherical ones, the company plans to use aspheric lenses exclusively in their helmet.
In addition, to help control costs, the company said that it had made five drastically different designs for the optics system, and had downgraded the cost of serial optics from a few thousand dollars to a few hundred. Livemap added that it would use a 720p picop engine and “retina” projection system in its prototype, which would give it double the resolution of previous models.
Livemap said that it had “broken the theoretical limits” of aspheric optics in order to obtain those specification. The work was carried out by two Russian science institutes, an optical glass melt company from Japan and a US firm described as a “worldwide market leader in aspheric optics.” In all, more than 20 engineers and opticians were involved, according to the company.
Since Livemap first announced its product, another firm has emerged as a competitor. That company, Skully Helmets, has developed a motorcycle helmet that offers “a fighter pilot-style Heads Up Display” and a 180 degree rear-view camera Gizmodo reported back in July.
The Skully AR-1 (the AR stands for augmented reality) also uses Bluetooth technology and eliminates the need for rear-view mirrors, making the bike thinner in the process. The helmet reportedly makes it possible to see someone standing as close as two feet behind the rider and three feet to both the left and right – all without the rider moving his or her head.
When asked about their competitor, Artishchev dismissed the product, telling TechCrunch that it was “like Google Glass put into a helmet – with all its disadvantages like tiny screen, low saturation and contrast, low resolution.”
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