I’m reaching out because I’m looking for some validation for this idea I’ve been building a proof of concept of.
A little about me to set some context, I, along with my roommates, make free cycling related tools in our spare time, including a routing tool, https://sherpa-map.com, a physics simulator tool for cycling, GPX Route Speed Estimator for Cyclists: Multi-Surface, Weather, and Nutrition Strategy, and a GPX activity racer tool GPX Activity Racer – Race Against Past Performances or your competition.
I’ve made a few others as well, but this post isn’t about that, I just wanted to showcase the fact that I can build the upcoming idea, but I’m wondering if it would be worth it to develop it for anyone else.
The idea:
A phone app that lets users import a route GPX file and/or start an activity. The app is designed to work entirely offline, in your pocket, without much of a GUI, providing voiced turn-by-turn directions if following a route.
While you are riding, it allows you to ask questions or give commands into your Bluetooth headset, like, “What’s the distance until the next aid station?”, “Route me back to the beginning on the flattest possible route.”, “What’s my best 20-minute normalized power so far?”, “What’s my current distance?”, “What’s my net elevation gain?”, “What mile has the beginning of the biggest climb on the route?”.
Utilizing the physics simulator code and your riding so far, it could even determine when you’ll be where, so you can ask, “How much longer until I’m back on pavement?”, “When should I start heading back to avoid the sun going down when cycling?”.
I also plan on having it continuously monitor and analyze your ride, so if you finish a climb it can recognize this and state “Nice job! You managed 340 watts for 3 minutes up the last 300ft climb!”.
Basically, the idea is, that this could replace your head unit (or accompany it nicely).
I even intend it to have rerouting capabilities, i.e. “take me to the nearest gas station”.
So far, I’ve managed to develop a functioning Android app that works entirely offline, recording with real-time AI background noise removal, monitoring for speech using silero-vad, recording speech to memory, transcribing speech using a specially trained Mozilla Deepspeech model, on the phone, tokenizing the transcription with a WordPeice algorithm, and feeding it to a specially trained BERT Tensorflow model which maps your intent to a particular function.
I plan on developing this app no matter what for my purposes as I feel having practically limitless knowledge of the entire route, and the activity thus far, as well as voiced turn-by-turn directions that function entirely offline could help me with upcoming gravel races. However, if people find this concept interesting, I’d buy a MacBook to make an IOS version and flesh out the interface to be more user-friendly and have things like, a login, a connect with Strava feature, etc.
by firebird8541154
6 Comments
It’s a really interesting concept and good luck to you if you pursue it. Some more tech savvy tourers might dig it.
From my recent touring experiences though, my personal desire in terms of routing and head units and tech etc.
1 that they just *work*, first time, every time. I would happily give up 80% of my Garmin’s edge explore features if it could only do it’s main ones reliably instead of the usual blank screening, ‘do a U turn at the next opportunity’, skipping sections etc. I admire your vision and ambition, but when I’m touring I’d like simple things that work before complex ones that may or may not.
2 on the other hand, some monitoring/integration could be good. I don’t always know when I’m running low on energy and need a break and some food. I don’t always realise it’s been too long since I applied sunscreen etc. I don’t use a power meter, so I don’t realise if I’m pedalling unevenly because one foot hurts etc. Something that tells me these things could be useful when touring.
I’d use this.
You need to add the questions, “how long until the top of this climb”, and “route me to the nearest cafe.”
Cool project. I love the idea of it being completely off-line. You could add downloading OpenCycle maps beforehand (I guess that or similar is the idea). The “prediction” feature is really nice, I’ve been using the one in Komoot to plan my rides, it works okay once you have calibrated it, but it does not update itself while you ride. I’m not specially keen on the voice instructions, nor on the re-calculating part. I always turn voice commands and re-calculation off on my devices as I find them annoying while I ride, and because short detours are normal when you’re travelling and you don’t need / want the device recalculating the route all the time. Another thought is that app is going to consume a lot of power as it need to be recalculating constantly.
Good luck with it, and let us know of the progress!
I can see this working for riders exploring new areas, occasionally, but it’s not something I’d wager on a tour. Surprises et al can ruin a day, so if prefer to have the worked out roughly in advance and then let the head unit take over. Also not all tourers wear headphones so the lack of Gui makes headphones a must.
Not sure if it’s on your list but looking at current pace and avg speed, it could be helpful to show an ETA whenever the user requests it.