[Bike] Swarm Coordinates Bicycle Light Flashes

Bike lights can make these two-wheeled vehicles more visible to cars, pedestrians, and other cyclists, enhancing safety at night. As you pass another biker, or share the same pavement space when traveling in the same direction, you might feel some kinship with your fellow rider. What if, however, your bikes could “speak” to each other, coordinating lighting in the same manner that fireflies synchronize their flashes?

Such is the idea behind [Bike] Swarm, by Alex Berke, Thomas Sanchez, and Kent Larson at the MIT Media Lab. Swarm bikes are equipped with a headlight, as well as supplemental lighting arranged on the bike’s down tube, and are powered by a custom electronics package. Prototypes were designed and fabricated at the MIT Media Lab, then attached to local city bike share program bikes for experimentation.

As bikes approach each other, they communicate wirelessly with onboard nRF24L01 modules, and employ a custom algorithm running on an Arduino Nano to sync up their flashes. The effect — shown in the video below — is interesting with just one or two bikes, but mesmerizing as more join the fray/pack/swarm. This makes the flashing lights look almost like a single iridescent entity, traveling effortlessly along a city street!