MIT Developing “Smart Bikes” and a Facebook App For Bikers
In preparation for the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference next month, MIT is rolling out a pilot program in Copenhagen that will allow the city’s biking residents to exchange social information and share their relative positioning with each other via the internet using GPS, cell phones, smart tags and a self-organizing system.
The program, called “SmartBiking,” encourages bikers to interact in novel ways including through a Facebook app called “I crossed your path.”
According to Christine Outram, the principal research assistant on the project, the Facebook app creates a “social network for cyclists, allowing them to link up with people they may have ridden past during the day and potentially establish new connections.”
