Mardu Swanepoel

Development of a Smart Bicycle Dock
Masters in Electronic Engineering Student

Project: Smart Bicycle Dock
Bio: I am an engineering student holding an B.Eng degree in Mechatronic Engineering, currently pursuing my masters of Electronic Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch. Engineering, alongside art, design, business, exploring and fellowship - are my greatest interests in life. My biggest passion in life is to take the things that I have been given by Him, and use it to address the most purposeful problems in this world. I believe in ‘never stop exploring’, always thinking differently, always starting with why and always making the most of this opportunity, life, that I have been given.

My research contribution entails developing a smart bicycle dock to protect on-street bicycles in metropolitan areas. An mechanical frame physically secures the bicycle's frame and wheels, and is combined with force-detection-sensors to detect any attempts of theft. The system is connected to the IoT to allow cloud hosted system management & monitoring, also enabling smartphone-based user interaction.

During my project I cover work relevant to mechanical and electronic design. These include mechanical frame design, electro-mechanical locking mechanism development, electro-mechanical force-transducer design with signal amplification, electronic hardare development, and the development of an signal processing algorithm to detect theft.