Life Cycle

During the summer of 2021, I participated in UC Berkeley's Transfer Pre-Engineering Program (T-PREP). Maker Design Studio (MDS), a 22-hour intensive short-course for incoming Berkeley Engineering transfers, was part of the T-PREP program. MDS taught students to rapidly ideate, design and prototype innovative engineering systems for societal scale problems.

Each team in the Maker Design Studio had to build an engineering solution project based on the following societal scale problem categories: Smart Energy & Environment, Smart Mobility, Smart Water, Smart Health, Smart Structures and Smart Security. My team decided to choose a project that could improve the safety of the motor bikers and bicyclists on the road. Therefore, we built blind spot detector for bikes and bicycles so that the riders can change lanes with maximum safety. We interviewed stakeholders like real life motor bikers and bicyclists to get their insight about this problem and targeted all those vital points when working in our project. Our project was named 'LifeCycle'. We used Arduino feather ESP32 as our main microprocessor. Additionally, we used sensors, LED, buzzer and also vibrator in our product. I was the mechanical lead of our team and used Fusion 360 to create the design of our prototype. I also contributed in the Arduino setup. The main concept of our project was to alert the motor bikers and bicyclists about vehicles in their blind spot, which the side mirrors cannot detect. We used two sensors at the back of the bikes which sensed the approaching vehicle in the blind spots. Whenever the sensor detected a vehicle, the microcontroller enabled LED and buzzer at the handlebar to alert the driver. We also attached vibrator in the sit as an extra alert to the driver. With our product, whenever a motor-biker or a bicyclists wanted to change lane with a vehicle at their blind spot, they were alerted and warned.