Vanhawks Valour: World's first smart bike?

A concept smart bike that connects to your smartphone and transmits information from an array of sensors has made its way onto Kickstarter

Designed by startup Vanhawks, the Valour is a smartbike aiming to maximise your safety and provide metrics on how you're peddling.

Unlike other smart bikes, the Vanhawks Valour is not an electric bike. In fact, it's a carbon fibre framed road bike. However, it's stuffed with a variety of sensors, including an accelerometer, magnetometer and a speed sensor.

It can connect with any device that runs iOS, Android or Pebble according to its makers. It'll piggyback off those devices to provide turn-by-turn instructions to the rider in the form of LED indicators on the handlebars.

According to Vanhawk, these LED indicators will provide riders with valuable information. Like routes that avoid steep hills.

“A year ago, we set out to create a fundamentally new kind of bike,” the company said on its website. "We believed there had to be a way to improve a technology that hadn't been re-thought in 120 years.

"Bikes are one of the funnest, most efficient and most environmentally sound forms of transportation. That's why we care about them so much.

"Over the last 300+ days, we've poured our hearts into re-thinking urban commuting from the ground up. It took countless nights, thousands of engineering decisions and R&D with some of the world's most advanced production partners to finally make it here."

It's currently a Kickstarter project – the company is hoping to raise CAD$100,000 (£55,000) to get the wheels in motion. So to speak.