Note: this is just a cool-looking Chinese bicycle; there are no photos of the DuBike yet.
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as sailing past a traffic jam on a bicycle, laughing at the people stuck in their cars. It’s an experience that’s easy to have in many Chinese cities where traffic congestion is common, and now it seems Baidu is looking to make city biking even more fun by bringing it into the digital age. The Chinese search engine company confirmed to Tech in Asia this morning that it’s currently working on a smart bike OS called DuBike.
The confirmation comes in response to rumors about the bike on Chinese media.
A Baidu representative explains:
This smart bike OS we are developing is going to be opened up to bike makers in the future. The DuBike system includes sensors on the bike as well as apps in the cloud. The [rumors in Chinese media] described most of the major functions of the smart bike, which can design a riding route or work-out plan for bikers who bike for health according to factors like his body conditions and heart rate. It can also help bikers build a community and crowdsource a riding map. The prototype has started road test.
No further details, such as when production DuBike models will be ready for sale, are available at this time.
See: BMW and Baidu team up to bring semi-autonomous car tech to China
Baidu, which is best known for being China’s top search engine, has been diversifying into smart tech and other home gadgets in the past year. Recently it unveiled a smart blood pressure gizmo, smart chopsticks that can detect toxic cooking oil, and an augmented camera called Baidu Eye that’s quite different from Google Glass.
China’s Baidu confirms it’s working on smart bike tech
