Expanding Awareness, Enhancing Safety
Lume is an AR system designed for motorcycle helmets that helps riders stay safe by detecting cars in their blind spots. It was developed as part of a VR simulation in Unity to recreate real road situations and demonstrate how the system would work in real-time.
Lume improves the rider’s awareness of their surroundings—especially in hard-to-see areas—by displaying visual alerts inside the helmet when a vehicle enters the blind spot. The system also shows key ride information like speed and fuel level, all within the rider’s line of sight, so there's no need to look away from the road.
To make the experience more immersive and interactive, we also built a physical bike handle using Arduino, which allowed users to navigate the AR space more naturally during the simulation. This added a tangible layer of control and made the experience feel closer to real-life riding.
Key Learnings
Working on Lume taught us how to design AR elements that feel intuitive and supportive in motion-heavy environments. We learned how to use Unity to create responsive, real-time feedback and how to present critical ride data without overwhelming or distracting the user.
Building the Arduino-based bike handle also gave us hands-on experience in integrating hardware with spatial computing, pushing us to think about physical interaction in virtual environments.
