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TECH NEWS
2022 Garmin patent camera augmented bicycle radar sensor system - 1 (3)Garmin patents rear-view bike camera triggered by approaching dangers
Garmin has been granted a patent for a bicycle radar system that incorporates a camera that starts recording video when dangers approach from behind, allowing the collection of evidence in the event of a close pass… or worse.
Garmin already offers bike radar systems: the Varia R315 (£129.99) warns of vehicles up to 140 metres away, while the Varia RTL515 (£169.99) is similar but incorporates a rear light.
The new design – the subject of a recently published patent – uses similar radar technology but also includes a camera that helps warn of dangers approaching from behind and could automatically capture video in certain circumstances. Garmin still lists the long-discontinued Virb action camera, but it's nothing like what's described in this patent.
The system comprises a unit at the back of your bike that incorporates a radar sensor, camera, processor and transceiver and “a mobile electronic device” – a head unit – at the front of your bike that’s capable of displaying cartographic (map-type) data and communicating a threat level.
The radar sensor determines the speed and position of other traffic on the road and, if particular conditions are satisfied, the camera will begin to capture video data.
“Radar systems mounted to a moving object may be improved by incorporating a camera having a field of view at least partially overlapping with the sensor field of the radar sensor,” says Garmin.
“The use of a camera in addition to a radar sensor enables the… system to enhance the situational awareness indicators in a manner that would not be feasible using only the reflections of radar sensor signals.”
Situational awareness indicators? Garmin means things like text, symbols, icons, highlighting, and flashing colours that would be shown on the head unit to warn you of dangers approaching from behind.
“The use of a camera is also advantageous in that the size of objects may be accurately ascertained, which may be used to calculate and display a higher threat level for larger targets,” says Garmin.
The head unit could give you a real-time view of dangers approaching in a stylised format – as shown in the image above – or even provide a live video of what’s going on behind.
The system could also control a speaker that gives you pre-recorded messages – such as “on your right” – to warn you if traffic is close, the idea being that you can “take precautionary or corrective measures”. It could also tell you that a vehicle is a given distance behind and is likely to reach you in a certain amount of time.
Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that the system could begin to record video data when vehicles get close.
According to Garmin, “[The system could] store the image and/or video data to any suitable portion of [a] memory unit, which may be stored in a ‘rolling buffer’ format such that stored data is overwritten periodically, such as every 15 minutes… unless a user intervenes.”
This method of storage is already common in bike/action cameras.
“In this way, the image and/or video data may be stored in [a] memory unit such that in the event that an accident or other noteworthy event occurs, the stored data may be saved or copied to another device.”
In other words, if there’s an incident you’ll have video evidence that shows what happened.
As with anything patent-related, there’s no guarantee that Garmin’s system will make it to market. Although the patent was granted recently, the background work was begun in 2016 at the latest.
If it ever does see the light of day, would you be interested?
Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.
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25 comments
I would definitely be interested. I own both a tail light with built in video and Garmin Varia and use the Varia whenever I ride, it really feels like having eyes in the back of my head. On club ride today I was able to alert the group to fast approaching cars several times, way before they could be heard, allowing us to tidy up and allow cars to overtake more easily. The other riders must think I have a sixth sense! 😆
Before I tried the Varia Radar I dismissed it as a totally unnecessary gimmick. Just look behind you for goodness sake !
I borrowed one and soon realised how amazing it was and quickly bought one! I was lost without it when I gave it back. The same has been universally found by those that have them.
The addition of the camera would be very welcome indeed! I have a Virb Elite that runs for the entire ride. As long as the battery of any dual radar/camera has a life of at least 8 hours then it will be a winner.
You might say that since getting the Variab Radar , I haven't looked back! 😂
PS Garmin dont recommend you Not Looking Back 😉.
i wonder if any new Edge devices might be able to view the camera image in real time? Hmmmm possibilities 🙂
That's interesting. I've been wondering if it would be worthwhile, as I'm not that flexible. Looking back can be a problem sometimes.
Most especially in Ongar. Actually, I heard tell that their only book shop closed recently. The local rag reported, "Book lack in Ongar."
You could always try a mirror first.
Yes! If the execution is similar to the brilliant Varia radar I'll be a very early adopter.
Im still bamboozled by how one area of the Garmin office can come up with these great ideas and the other half comes up with the terribly clunky Garmin software menus😄
Credit for a low power bike radar concept should go to South African startup iKubu who developed a product call Backtracker, and were acquired by Garmin in 2015.
Don't see the point actually. Riding in town will trigger it all the time, and when you're riding out in the sticks you can hear something coming and work out if its close or moving aside to pass you.
Would be very useful for people with hearing problems though.
Might be hard to imagine for you, but people who take this sport seriously often ride with some level of headwind which drowns any traffic noise...
Spiffingly snotty comment - I didn't realise there was a benchmark speed for being regarded as "serious" - but I can hear traffic behind me at 50-60 km/h quite easily, even with my laboured unserious breathing.
There is no benchmark level. Depends on wind speed and type of vehicle appraching from behind.
If you hear every car, good for you. I, and probably most others, don't.
Imagine being in somewhere like Australia with its long, very fast back country roads. Any traffic coming from behind might be coming at high speed.
If it's something like a roadtrain it's going to be very big and traveling very fast and probably has a hard time stopping. Even the stones kicked up by it would be unpleasant to be around.
Your safest option on the bike is to tactically get off the road as soon as possible and let it pass before continuing on your way.
With Varia you can detect it way before you can hear it. This is just an extension of that very useful concept.
Or indeed, somewhere like Australia where you often have motorists doing 80-100km/hr on any city road straight enough to let them. My thoughts are that its a meaningless gimmick to collect yet more "oh look, surprisingly bad driving videos" that are of zero use since the police won't act on them
My thoughts are that its a meaningless gimmick to collect yet more "oh look, surprisingly bad driving videos" that are of zero use since the police won't act on them
Not quite zero, if you're prepared to collect cases and keep going against all the police lies and obfuscation as they try to cover up their inactivity and corruption
"The head unit could give you a real-time view of dangers approaching in a stylised format – as shown in the image above"
Officer: How did you crash, sir?
Cyclist: My Garmin alerted me to a potential risk behind me and I was staring at the tiny screen to see what it might be, and I failed to see the car/pedestrian/bus right in front of me.
once they release a version with a bullet proof screen, smoke, machine guns and tyre puncturing spikes i'll be buying that. the last few months seems to be worse for bad driving than i've ever known it.
I've seen a couple of other cameras in development that look similar:
Hawkeye - https://hawkeye.bike/
Streetlogic - https://www.streetlogic.ai/
Both seem to be some way off from being an actual product. Will be interesting to see how well any of them work when (if?) they're available to buy.
Thanks Tom. We'll follow up on those.
The real benefits of such a device will surely require the independent verification of the accuracy in order that they can gain acceptance by the insurance industry and law enforcement.
Currently most police forces want 2 minutes before and after the incident, so I'm not seeing the benefit of a device that wouldn't be able to supply that.
It's entirely possible that this would be permamently video record mode, but only save the video when it registered an incident. It would then be possible in software to "pad" the video by, say, two minutes to allow a full picture to be saved.
That sounds similar to how the Cycliq cams can mark a recording if an incident happens so that it doesn't get overwritten. I'm not convinced this is a good idea - I'd rather have cams that support either multiple SD cards or larger sizes - it's easy enough to buy them in 256GB size which should be more than enough for anyone.
The real benefits of such a device will surely require the independent verification of the accuracy in order that they can gain acceptance by the insurance industry and law enforcement
The police wont even consider accepting any information from such a device, in the same way as they refuse to accept any GPS information. This policy is valuable to them as it enables the 'cylists are always travelling at less than 10 mph' dodge, which they deploy to get drivers off blatant double white line crossing offences. They do this even when you're obviously travelling at well over 20 mph just from looking at the video itself. They do this because they are idle cyclist-hating b******s.
Currently most police forces want 2 minutes before and after the incident
I'm amazed that people put up with this- even Lancashire, the most evil yet inept force outside Gotham City, don't try that dodge any more. You only need about 10 seconds to show that tipper truck, lorry, taxi, Audi towing a caravan etc. crashing through red lights. 30 seconds in total is quite enough for most individual close passing offences, double white line offences etc. Cycling Mikey doesn't give them more than a few seconds. The main aim of the police is to deter the reporting of offences, so they're just making up rules to make if difficult for you if they think you'll go along with it. Another part of the dodge is that you'll probably have to strongly compress a 4 minute video to get it under their file size limits, so they may be able to reject it as 'low quality'
If the winds are this high, I don't think I'd be out cycling in the first place, tbh.
This looks very interesting. I was wondering whether this could happen - Garmin already have the radar capability, which as we know can record extra information and be exposed via 3rd party apps (see a previous post by me about this https://road.cc/content/forum/garmin-varia-radar-data-analysis-290881), and there has previously been a range of action cameras from Garmin under the VIRB range, some of which had ANT+ communications. There's also the excellent Garmin VIRB Editor software than can overlay sensor data from a FIT file onto a recorded video.
Put all this together and we have a solution that can selectively record front and rear with ability to put speed and distance data into a video. I hope it happens.
Plus only recording at pass-time would mean potentially a great battery life