CCDS InvenTeam April Blog

Intro  

In early April, Councilmember Mark Jeffreys invited the Cincinnati Country Day School InvenTeam to be recognized by Cincinnati City Council for our innovative work advancing cyclist safety. Our visit to City Hall began by meeting with Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation and Engineering. We gave a demonstration of the invention and learned about the department’s work for bicycle safety.  At the City Council meeting, we shared our journey during the LMIT grant year, gave a presentation of our invention, and discussed the importance of focusing on bicyclist safety in Cincinnati.  The City Council unanimously voted in favor of the resolution and gave us incredible words of encouragement. It was an amazing experience. 

Tech

Visiting the University of Cincinati Ground Floor Makerspace last month proved to be a worthwhile use of our time. After the visit, the technical team immediately began to work on creating a case for our device that allows for the adjustment of the laser lines to state-specific legal passing distances. The technical team prototyped these using gears that we designed and laser cut.  

Our tech lead met with electrical engineers from the University of Cincinnati to get some advice on fixing an issue with our circuit board. With the advice in mind, the technical team designed a new circuit board which properly synchronizes the blinking of the projected bike lane with the blinkers on the back of the bicycle. Aside from this, the team was all-hands-on-deck recording and getting training data for the artificial intelligence (AI) model. The team will continue to develop the AI component to improve its performance.  

Communications  

The communications team allocated most of their time to getting training data for the AI model. We also created an itinerary for our visit to Boston in June and began to prepare materials for the presentation at EurekaFest so we can best represent our hard work. We finalized the layout of our setup at EurekaFest, and created banners, handouts and t-shirts. To spread awareness for bike safety in our community the team designed and fabricated window clings for car windows to make drivers aware of the three-foot passing law for cyclists on the road. The team presented our invention and recent city council recognition to the student body during assembly.  

During this busy time, the team still found time for friendly games of ping pong and basketball.