An Innovative Machine
Damon Motorcycles announced its new CoPilot advanced warning system is powered by BlackBerry QNX technology. The company licensed BlackBerry QNX technology. This includes the real-time operating system. Damon plans to unveil its bike equipped with this technology at CES at 10 am Pacific Standard Time on January 7.
If you’re not familiar with the Damon Motorcycles warning system, it puts sensors and cameras on the bike and monitors the motorcycle’s surroundings in real-time to provide the rider with warnings and alerts through visual cues on a monitor or haptic feedback. This should make the bike the safest on the road and allow for riders to know about issues and potential issues faster than ever before.
I had a chance to chat with Jay Giraud, the CEO of Damon motorcycles and asked him about how the partnership came to be. “Thankfully, one of our investors worked at QNX for years, and he connected us with the CTO of BlackBerry and over the following year we built this relationship with BlackBerry,” said Giraud. “The QNX software really is the cream of the crop when it comes to operating the mission-critical systems in cars.”
Giraud went on to say that the system in Damon Motorcycles product is different than the one used in automobiles. “It’s quite a bit more sophisticated, actually.” More specifics will come on January 7.
It’s important to note that BlackBerry QNX technology is already used in over 150 million vehicles and several million other systems worldwide. The technology has been used in all sorts of fields, including medical, industrial automation, robotics, energy, defense, and aerospace.
With the technology on its bikes, Damon hopes to be a disruptive force in the industry. I can’t wait for the official reveal so that I can share all of Giraud’s comments with you as well as the specifications of the bike.
QNX was an early player and driving force in no-bloat telematics, already occupying a lot of embedded and mission-critical industrial, scientific, and commercial projects. If any micro-kernel based architecture can be used to do this well, it’s likely to be from this company.