IIT-Roorkee students develop 'airbag for bikers'

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IIT-Roorkee students have decided to safeguard the lives and heath of bikers with a unique project - inflatable helmet. The rising number of bikers and luxury automobile brands getting into two-wheeler manufacturing  calls for stringent safety measures for the riders. The students working on the project feel that if this product is launched, fatal head injuries may become a thing of the past.

As per a report in Business Today, this helmet will operate like an airbag, providing the rider a soft cushioning in the incident of a collision. This will help prevent fatal injuries when a road mishap happens.

Such a project cannot be done without the right guidance from an expert, hence Professor Sanjay H Upadhyay is helping the students with their cause. His thought of an inflatable helmet emerged at the times when he was  working on an inflatable space antenna project at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). This motivated him to assign the project to final year mechanical engineering students.

Talking about the helmet, the inflatable helmet is being designed to act in less than 100 milliseconds by checking on the acceleration, lean angle and other riding factors. And all of these actions are initiated through multiple sensors installed in the helmet. Made of Kapton polyimide films, the helmet is being developed on the lines of Swedish company Hovding known for making inflatable helmets. Although, the students have done their bit of testing, such a product demands extensive checks, hence more research is underway to make the helmet more effective.

The students also claim that this helmet once on sale, will not be a life saver with a premium price. The intention is to make this affordable, so as to make it accessible to every rider and safeguard as many lives as possible.