Innovation > Innovation
HAMMERHEAD
R/GA, New York / HAMMERHEAD NAVIGATION / 2015
Awards:
Overview
Credits
Overview
ClientBriefOrObjective
The Hammerhead One is an intelligent navigation device that effortlessly guides cyclists along the safest and best bicycle routes. Cycling has exploded in popularity worldwide, but there remains no safe way to navigate on a bicycle and no comprehensive software specific to the training and social needs of cyclists.
With Hammerhead, we’re solving these important problems by crowdsourcing the world’s most accurate and up-to-date map of bike routes, and then safely communicating these routes to cyclists in real-time with intuitive light patterns.
The initial inspiration for the design of the Hammerhead One came from indication systems. We studied how fighter pilots use an intuitive light system to land their aircrafts on moving carriers, and developed a similar form of communication for bikers. We invented the Hammerhead One, a connected device that pairs with our app to communicate directional information and route metrics to the cyclist through and intuitive light array, visible in their peripheral vision.
Open-source hardware and access to 3D printing allowed the team to quickly iterate on the initial design. An intensive development phase saw many iterations of design of the electronics and housing. The team was able to pull resources from their respective diverse backgrounds.
Implementation
The technology behind the Hammerhead system is provided in three distinct verticals. One: Ruggedized electronics. Two: a smartphone application. And Three: cloud services.
The Hammerhead One device deign emphasizes simplicity and sleek aerodynamic aesthetics. The app similarly emphasizes simplicity while allowing the user to rapidly plan and modify their rides. The data heavy GIS hosting and processing heft of mapping and route design is left in the cloud with GIS providers; Mapquest, Mapbox and Open Street Maps. The combination of these three services allow Hammerhead to be a cross-cultural and global operation from the outset, cue-based navigation and international access to mapping data gave our team an ability to share our vision and provide a solution in almost every market without excessive language support or the need to customize our service in new markets.
In addition to this the Hammerhead app provides the best social and training analytics platform available to cyclists. This allows bikers to tap into the entirety of the cycling community’s knowledge about the best routes in any given location, compete with one another in real time, follow ones another’s progress, and utilize the most sophisticated analysis of training metrics available to cyclists during, and post workout.
Our 6 person engineering team was able to begin research and development through $190k raised from our successful crowd funding campaign and additional capital from our seed round to meet the goal of publicly releasing the first Hammerhead units in the fall of 2014. Each member brought a unique set of skills and because of this, we were able to keep the team lean, and direct the seed capital straight into the product and the prohibitive expenses of building prototypes.
Outcome
Hammerhead is customized for the dynamics of the cycling and endurance sports market. There is a strong shift towards cycling motivated by convenience and an increasing health consciousness. The trends in sports tracking, quantified fitness and intelligent training are opening a huge space in the market for training plans that plug directly into your equipment and applications. Hammerhead is building a community to improve the experience of cycling.
The ability to access and synthesize data has made Hammerhead a huge success globally. Demand for the idea was evident from our successful crowd funding campaign in the fall of 2013. The campaign closed with $200,000 worth of sales to users in 35 countries. With the release of the Hammerhead system in the fall of 2014 those figures have grown dramatically so five thousand users in 65 countries and our community continues to grow exponentially. Apart from the United States, we have seen a great deal of traction in Western Europe, which accounts for almost a third of our market to date. Asia and Latin America have grown as portions of our market share in the first quarter of this year.
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