New Motorcycling Tech Revealed at CES

The annual CES event in Las Vegas might have been dominated by AI inventions and an endless stream of ever-larger TVs, but motorcycling got some attention with a couple of new product releases aimed purely at riders.

Satellite navigation expert Garmin led the charge, launching the zūmo R1 Radar as a $599.99 bolt-on system that can give any motorcycle the sort of rear-facing blind-spot radar that’s only now starting to trickle into showrooms on a handful of high-end models. The base kit includes the radar itself, which bolts to the back of your bike somewhere near the licence plate, and a mounting kit to facilitate the process. That radar is wired to a pair of indicator light units—one for each side of the handlebar—that illuminate green, amber, or red to tell you if a vehicle is looming in your blind spot on that side.

The system can also pair to your smartphone via Bluetooth, and when used with the zūmo Radar app it gives a visual display of where vehicles behind you are, along with a color code to indicate their threat level. Alternatively, you can use Garmin’s zūmo XT2 navigation system as the display, which can be had as a bundle with the R1 Radar for a total of $1,200. If you have a compatible Bluetooth headset, the system also gives audible warnings of approaching vehicles.

If you want even more tech, another CES launch was the production version of Intelligent Cranium Helmets’ iC-R line of smart helmets, the culmination of a project that’s been underway for nearly a decade. The top-spec iC-Rs+ Sport Plus Edition lid, at an eyewatering $1,850, is packed with tech including a 1080p HD front-facing camera, acting as a dashcam, plus dual rear-facing cameras that monitor traffic behind. The images from those two cameras are stitched together into a single 240-degree image that can be projected onto a head-up display inside the helmet.

The same HUD can also be used with Android Auto or Apple Carplay, giving access to apps and navigation, as well as providing speed information, and there are additional sensors built into the helmet to give proximity alerts. The top-spec version of the helmet also gets a photochromatic visor that changes between clear and tinted, and there’s a voice control system and a bar-mounted controller to give access to the main functions. A crash detection system can automatically call emergency services if the helmet senses an accident.

If the top-of-the-range version is a bit too much, either in terms of tech or price, there are additional variants lower down the lineup that pare both down. The iC-Rs Sport Edition does without the photochromatic visor and makes do with 256GB of expandable onboard storage (down from 512GB on the Sport Plus Edition), and comes in at $1,675. The iC-R Rider Edition drops the price to $1,165 and ditches the front-facing camera while keeping the HUD and rear cameras, reducing storage to 128GB, and the iC-Re Economy Edition slashes the cost to $650 by removing the rear cameras.

The helmets are all certified by the DOT and Europe’s ECE 22.06 standards, with the electronics passing FCC testing. SNELL certification is also underway and expected to be completed soon.