By John Jeffay
It started when Yoav Elgrichi, a keen motorcyclist, was almost hit by a car.
He was shaken up by his near-miss and scoured the Internet for a rider assistance system. Surely there must be a Mobileye for motorbikes that could protect him, he thought.
But there wasn’t. So, like any good high-tech entrepreneur, he invented one: Rider Dome, an advanced rider assistance system (ARAS).
“I was sure there must be a solution and I was shocked when I couldn’t find one,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “You have alerts for cars that reduce accidents by 30 percent. But not for motorcycles, even though they’re 30 times more dangerous.”
Motorbikes and cars both use the roads, Elgrichi says, just as airplanes and helicopters both use the sky. But they behave very differently. He and his team had to build a ground-up solution for two wheels.
Elgrichi set about harnessing the power of vision AI to provide riders with real-time alerts that would prevent accidents.
Motorbikes are fitted with front and rear wide-angle cameras, and a rider alert unit is mounted on the right and left mirror stems.
Beeps and flashes warn of critical road threats—such as dangerous overtaking and zigzagging—and provide collision alerts, safe distance alerts, and blind spot alerts.
The company is registered in Singapore, where Elgrichi, a veteran of food delivery and wearable device startups, was living at the time of his near-accident.
But he says the brains behind it are Israeli, and he’s now based in Israel.
Rider Dome launched commercially just over a year ago, with Singapore Post (SingPost) as its first client. “They were having so many accidents that over 10% of all their motorbike fleet was out of action at any given time,” he says.
His technology was initially aimed at the growing number of motorbike fleets, including pizza and burger deliveries, parcels, post, police, first responders, and logistics.
He says the riders love it because it gives them an added layer of protection, even if it does mean their boss knows exactly what they’re up to.
Fleet managers responsible for hundreds of riders can see who’s speeding, who’s misbehaving, and who needs help. They can also access the motorbike cameras in an emergency.
Coca-Cola in Indonesia, Kenya, and Mexico, the Barcelona municipality, IBM, and the UK delivery company Deliveroo are now using Rider Dome.
Elgrichi says the plan is to roll out to hotter countries in Europe, such as Spain, Italy, and France, where there are more motorbikes on the roads, as well as Latin America and Asia.
Rider behavior differs from country to country, he says, so the company tweaks the AI to account for that.
“Riders in Bangkok behave differently from Tel Aviv,” he says. “In Jakarta [Indonesia], the traffic’s very dense, it’s very chaotic, and most of the time, the riders will find themselves riding between the cars.
“So the algorithm and the parameters need to be different compared to Barcelona, which has much more structured traffic and where riders aren’t actually allowed to ride between cars.”
Rider Dome collects vast quantities of data, which can provide useful insights for fleet managers.
It can measure, for example, how the size or weight of the load affects a motorbike or how a new generation of electric motorbikes compares with conventional gas-powered models.
Individual riders who aren’t part of a fleet will eventually be able to fit Rider Dome to their bikes, probably through their insurance company.
Rider Dome is also in talks with manufacturers about incorporating the system into their bikes during manufacture.
Elgrichi says that’s a few years away from becoming a reality, but they have already fitted Rider Dome to Harley-Davidsons at their headquarters in Milwaukee and to Nortons in Britain for trials.
“Our long-term plans also include electric bicycles and electric scooters, which are slowly moving from the sidewalk to the road, which is the most dangerous playground there is,” Elgrichi tells ISRAEL21c.
“I can tell you as a rider [of a BMW 750] that after you ride a day with our system, you cannot ride without it. We are constantly gathering a lot of information, and we can see how the riders’ habits change,” he says.
“They constantly receive collision or safe distance alerts, and subconsciously, they take these extra meters away and prevent potential accidents.”
Elgrichi has a team of 10 employees, mostly with AI expertise, who are developing and improving the product. It has attracted $2.3 million in funding so far.
He says they’ve had to create tech solutions for a very harsh environment. “We’re dealing with rattling motorcycles in the great outdoors, not a gaming computer in the lab.”
He says there are currently no direct rivals, although in 2018, another Israeli startup, Ride Vision, launched a similar product aimed at consumers rather than fleets.
Motorbike deaths and accidents aren’t just human tragedies. They are also a huge financial burden.
Elgrichi says that in the United States, the cost of a motorbike fatality is $1 million, including hospital and insurance costs and the loss of the rider’s earning potential.
“This is a problem we want to solve. At the end of the day, we want to save lives on a large scale. We are seeing too much of AI technology being used to paint nice pictures and to rewrite your email. But it’s important for saving lives.
“We don’t see enough startups using AI to save lives, so we are proud to be one of them.
“Israel has save lives on a large scale with Mobileye, we want to do the same for motorcycles and really move the needle.”
Produced in association with ISRAEL21c