Tag

Consumer Electronics Show

Browsing

Perhaps the best news from Alpinestars at CES is that the Italian brand is going to make its off-road airbag system available to consumers, later this year.

The news comes as part of Alpinestars’ larger airbag product line announcement, but we figured this news was so important, it deserved its own story.

This is because the Tech-Air OFF-ROAD V2 protection jacket is the first commercially available airbag system designed for off-road motorcyclists, and that makes it a game-changer for those who want the best protection in the dirt.

Another debut seen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the eagerly awaited Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 airbag vest offers a new name in autonomous airbag safety for motorcyclists.

Boasting the ability to put an airbag in almost any motorcycle jacket, the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 is a direct competitor with the Dainese Smart Jacket – as the two Italian brands continue to one-up each other in this budding space in motorcycle safety.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) isn’t known for its motorcycle debuts, but that has slowly changed over the years, especially as the motorcycle industry adopts more innovative approaches.

One of the largest trade shows in the United States, it is easy to see why motorcycle brands would want to get in front of the nearly 200,000 attendees that come each – and it helps that mainstream journalists there are fairly naive to the intricacies of the motorcycles industry, and will hype anything with a glossy veneer.

Case in point, the launch of the Damon Motorcycles Hypersport HS electric motorcycle, which just dropped at this year’s CES after much teasing.

It would be incorrect to say that we are eagerly awaiting the Segway Apex, an electric motorcycle from the recognizable urban transport brand. While the bike looks intriguing, we are skeptical of its actual abilities.

Set to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on the second week of January, one the motorcycle items of note is this electric motorcycle concept from Segway.

The Chinese-owned brand has been teasing its Apex for a couple weeks now, though details are still light on this potential future model. All we know right now is that parent company Ninebot says that the Segway Apex will do 125 mph / 0-60 in 2.9 seconds.

Known better for its self-balancing standing two-wheeled vehicles, Segway is brand to watch in the electric mobility space righ now, as it continues to push into more establish mobility sectors.

For instance, the brand had a convincing electric mountain bike / moped on display at EICMA, and now as we get ready for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, Segway has another model designed to get our attention: the Apex concept.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is underway in Las Vegas right now, and while usually the event doesn’t have much overlap with the motorcycle industry, Honda has decided to use CES to unveil its “Riding Assist” technology.

Honda Riding Assist is basically a creative technology package that allows a motorcycle to self-balance, without the use of gyroscopes.

Honda achieves this by raking out the motorcycle’s front forks, and then balances the motorcycle by moving the front wheel back and forth – like you’ve probably seen skilled cyclists do at traffic lights.

Motorcyclists probably recognize the name Continental for its work in the tire industry, but the company has its fingers in a number of key elements in the motorcycle industry.

Continental is the third largest automotive parts supplier worldwide, and there is a good chance that more than a few parts on your motorcycle (ABS, dash, suspension, etc) comes from the German brand.

So, we shouldn’t be too surprised to hear that Continental is developing what it calls “swarm intelligence” for motorcycles, through the Continental eHorizon platform. If you have no idea what that means, it’s cool. More simply put, Continental is trying to make Waze for motorcyclists.

Are you ready for another post about helmets, especially one with integrated technology? Sure you are, Sparky – and you will be happy to learn about this collaboration between Bell Helmets and a company called 360fly.

Like the Nikon KeyMission video camera, 360fly’s system captures everything around the rider in 4k video resolution, and then creates a video that can be viewed from an immersive virtual-reality perspective.

Thanks to a built-in GPS, altimeter/barometer, and accelerometer, the 360fly system is capable of overlaying telemetry data into its video, among a variety of other features. What really separates the unit from the rest though is what is in the pipeline from 360fly.

Yamaha’s Motobot was one of the bigger announcements to come from 2015, with the motorcycle riding humanoid robot promising to garner Yamaha a great deal of information about several key industries, as well as some headlines along the way.

Showing off the Yamaha Motobot at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Yamaha has made public a very ambitious schedule for Motobot, for the coming years. The most daunting task from Yamaha? To have Motobot making laps on a race track by 2017, at over 200 km/h (125 mph).

Here is a fun fact: pretty much every regular photographer you see on Asphalt & Rubber swings a Nikon camera for their craft – even this lowly author. This is probably because Nikon and Canon are the big names when it comes motorsport photography, so the odds workout pretty well on that account.

We have another reason to like Nikon’s cameras though, as the iconic photography brand is keen on getting into the action camera market.

Hoping to give GoPro et al a run for their money, Nikon at CES this week entered wearable video camera market with the Nikon KeyMission.