There’s nothing quite like a traffic jam that helps to increase your stress levels. It probably doesn’t help that traffic jams tend to occur when you want to leave to work and when you’re on the way home to work. That being said, a team has come together to create a helmet for cyclists called the MindRider that will supposedly be able to read your emotions, which in turn will help you map out a bike route either for commuting or for a nice relaxing ride on the weekend. The team took advantage of the fact that most, if not all, cyclists would be wearing a helmet. This allowed them to embed the sensors into the helmet itself instead of having the rider strap it to their wrist, arms, ankles, and so on.
Every time you strap on this new bike helmet, it starts to read your mind. As you ride down city streets, it tracks your brainwaves to measure your emotions and plots them on a map, so you can see the exact spots when you were most stressed out by traffic. The MindRider helmet was designed to optimize cycling. After a few rides, you can pull up the data you’ve generated to plan the best route for commuting or a relaxing weekend trip. A crowdsourced map gathers data as a reference for other cyclists or city planners trying to figure out the best location for new bike paths. Unlike most wearable tech, which require you to strap a gadget on your wrist or ankle or chest, the helmet integrates sensors into something you’re probably already wearing while riding on busy streets. But it looks a little different from the average bike helmet. “The bumps are inspired by the branching neurons and shape of the brain itself,” saysArlene Ducao, who designed the helmet along with Ilias Koen, a fellow data visualization expert. “They are stylistic, but as we move toward a final design, we may use them to help secure the circuit in place.”
