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By Charles J. Murray – The Bering Co., a French firm that specializes in wearable motorcycle gear, has rolled out a jacket that doubles as an airbag.
To make its decision on whether to activate the airbag, the product uses two key parameters: impact and loss of control. Working with engineers from U.S.-based Freescale Semiconductor, a major automotive supplier, Bering developed specialized modules to help detect a crash or a slide. A six-channel crash module, attached to the fork of the bike, uses a pair of two-axis accelerometers (pdf) and a pair of single-axis accelerometers (pdf) to look for deceleration in three axes (the devices are used in pairs for redundancy).
When the accelerometers sense impact, they send analog signals that are processed by an 8-bit Freescale microcontroller (pdf) on board the module. The module then sends the digitized data across a CAN databus to a separate interface module on the bike’s steering bar. There, a 16-bit microcontroller processes the data yet again, using the firing algorithm to determine whether the airbag needs to be activated. If it decides to fire, then the interface module uses an RF link to “talk” to the jacket. more> http://tinyurl.com/4nuk9ca
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Airbag Motorcycle Jacket
