BMW showcased their riderless R1200GS motorcycle in CES
Too many strange things get unveil in CES every year. This year BMW has showcased a motorcycle which doesn’t need a rider. Yes, an autonomous riderless motorcycle. This, so called “Ghost bike” wows and confuses crowd at the on going CES 2019 in Las Vegas.
It’s been a long time since autonomous cars are in trend and lot of manufacturers are working on it. However time has come when leading two-wheeler manufacturers foray into autonomous or riderless bikes. After Harley Davidson put up LiveWire electric bike for pre-orders, the world recently had a chance to see the spooky BMW bike at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. Watch the video below to see how a riderless bike feels like.
After watching the video, you would ask yourself why on earth would someone ride a riderless bike. On one hand self-driving cars can easily and safely ferry passengers around in comfort. And on the other hand, sitting on a motorcycle that operates itself holds absolutely no appeal. Fortunately, BMW doesn’t intend on bringing such a bike into production.
Why riderless bike in CES 2019?
According to BMW, this exceptionally advanced R1200GS has been developed in order to improve the safety features in upcoming models. They say that future technologies will allow their motorcycles to classify a rider’s behavior. This will help in determining a dangerous situation before anything wrong happens. If needed, the motorcycle could inform or warn the rider and in dire situations, even intervene to avoid an accident.
Slightly more conventional systems like adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist could also be used by bikes in next decade. CES 2019 is just a mode to show what technology can achieve.
There are people who hate the idea of self driving cars because they buy a car to drive it, not to get driven in. In the same way, people ride motorcycle because riding itself is a feeling and nothing can compensate it. We ride because we love to and to self riding motorcycles, its a BIG NO!
