See.Sense partners with Vodafone and Dublin City Council to roll out “world first” cyclist data collection program.
See.Sense
Bicycles in Dublin are soon to be equipped with sensors that will send real-time data over Vodafone’s Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) network. The initiative was announced on June 27 at the Velo-city cycle advocacy conference in Dublin and is being described as a “world first.”
The sensors are being provided by Belfast-based See.Sense and, soon, could also be included on share scooters, said the company’s chief strategy officer and cofounder Irene McAleese.
NB-IoT is the standard for a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network layer that allows everyday objects to be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).
See.Sense, founded by a husband-and-wife team, makes small but “intelligent” LED bicycle lights packed with accelerometers, gyroscopes, temperature measurement and ambient light detection chips, and Bluetooth transmitters.
The sensors can also be unbundled from the lights and placed as standalone units on bicycles, including share-bikes.
See.Sense has been working with Vodafone for more than a year to use the telecom company’s low-power persistent NB-IoT network. Real-time data from bicycle usage will be used to provide information on road surface conditions, collision events as well as route activity.
The aim is to generate data that will help the city’s planners improve conditions for cycling, and help bike share scheme operators manage their fleets more effectively.
See.Sense cofounders Irene and Philip McAleese with their sensor-packed smart bicycle light.
See.Sense
In a statement, See.Sense CEO Philip McAleese said:
Our city bike offering allows a low-cost, low-powered way to communicate data that will be scalable to city bike and scooter share schemes around the world—going forward this will also provide the real-time data necessary to support Mobility as a Service [MaaS] and to truly integrate the bicycle into Intelligent Transport Systems.”
Speaking from Conference Centre Dublin, where the four-day Velo-city conference is being staged, Irene McAleese enthused:
This project with Vodafone is groundbreaking—it’s about a different way to send data from a bike. Sending data over a cellular network is power hungry and can’t easily send location in real time without having a big drain on the battery.”
She added that the provision of real-time data is standard for other forms of transport—think Waze for cars or up-to-the-second arrival times for buses and trains—but is rarely available for bicycles. Even those share-bike systems which collects data from their bicycles usually only capture GPS data, rather than the rich data available from See.Sense sensors transmitting over Vodafone’s next-generation network.
“Cities now have so much data about other modes of transport,” stressed McAleese:
We have to have the voice of the bicycle in there. We need to ensure bicycles don’t get ignored in the ‘smart city’ of the future. Having real-time data from cycling links it in better with Mobility as a Service (MaaS).”
Vodafone switched on NB-IoT networks in Dublin last year and will be rolling them out in the U.K. and the rest of the world soon.
“As these networks are being switched on, we’re ready to go live and hit the ground running and have that first to market advantage,” said McAleese, who I interviewed for the Virtual Velo-city podcast I am producing from Dublin along with fellow journalist Laura Laker.
Pitching in during the same interview, American academic Tara Goddard welcomed the provision of rich data. The Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, and Texas A&M said:
I tell my students all the time that we treasure what we measure. The problem with the data we’ve so far had on cyclists has been it comes with no nuance. We have counts, and then we have routes so I think it’s really going to be helpful to have this much more nuanced information available.”
The initiative is a partnership between See.Sense, Vodafone and Dublin City Council. The first phase of the project will involve devices being fitted to bikes used by Vodafone employees before a bespoke device is developed for integration inside Dublin’s bike share program.
Debbie Power, IoT Country Manager, Vodafone Ireland said in a statement:
Currently, battery drain and connectivity in built-up urban areas are issues for connected mobility. NB-IoT offers a low power solution whilst providing increased penetration through walls and buildings meaning months of battery life on shared bikes, scooters and e-bikes connected on See. Sense’s technology. This will enable a seamless end-to-end connectivity experience, meaning cities, councils and shared bike operators can capture and manage the vast amounts of mobility data to design a safer, more efficient infrastructure for cyclists and other road users.”
Christopher Manzira, Dublin’s Senior Transportation Officer, enjoying the Velo-city Bike Parade.
Carlton Reid
Speaking from the Velo-city conference, Dublin’s Senior Transportation Officer Christopher Manzira, told me:
For policy reasons we need to understand the proportion of our citizens who are cycling and we need to understand reasons why [people] may not cycle. We need to understand why there are some areas where there is no cycling at all, for instance, in less affluent areas, even though the bike is often the best form of mobility. By getting real-time data we will be able to monitor cycle usage and will all be able to work out which of our traffic interventions work or do not work.”
(Manzira was responsible for the recently-opened and long proposed Sutton to Sandycove curb-separated cycleway from central Dublin via the coastal UNESCO biosphere of Clontarf.)
See.Sense has won multiple design, tech start-up and big data awards, including a Spectator magazine Economic Disruptor Award, the Highways UK Innovation Challenge for Safety, and – in partnership with British telecoms giant BT – the Big Chip Award for Best Internet of Things project.
The company has also staged three successful crowdfunding campaigns, raising over £290,000 in Kickstarter pledges in 2013, 2015 and 2017. See.Sense has also raised money from equity crowdfunding. It raised £711,000 on Crowdcube in 2016. Traditional venture capitalists have also invested in the company, including Techstart. In 2017 the company raised a further £400,000 from existing investors plus Clarendon VC.
