Ivan Golubic and his young team are already working on several innovations, Grunner bike being their largest, and most talked about project.
Another Croatian innovation caught the attention of the domestic and international media, this time around it is a Gunner electric bike that is voice controlled and knows all the traffic regulations so it can adjust the routes to suit current traffic conditions. This bike was invented by a young student from Pisarovina, Ivan Golubic, and on June 28, 2016, Jutarnji list published an interview with the young genious.
With Grunner, the new concept e-bike, you can paddle or not, depends on how tired you are. Throughout your ride, you are online, the bike photographs your entire route so you can have a look at it once you’re finished so you don’t miss a single detail. Since it also includes voice control, you don’t even have to worry about where each gadget is located. If you want to turn off the lights, all you have to do is say “Gunner lights” and the bike will do the rest.
Ivan Golubic will officially present his bike by the end of this summer and positive comments are already pouring in: “This is a unique electric bike, we didn’t want to create just one more in line, we wanted it to stand out from the crowd. I personally wrote and developed the module which is installed on the bike and I can say three models have already been ordered for testing” says Ivan, a student of the Technical college.
His entire team is comprised of high schoolers and young innovators: Zlatko Drazic from Pozega is in charge of the mechanics (and he is still in high school), Ivan Puljko is working on the design of the application and overall impression of the project while Karlo Siladi is developing the business plan for the whole Grunner project.
- Our biggest problem is the lack of space, we don’t have adequate working space where we can meet and work together on new projects. We all work in our own garages and see each other every few months to see what we’ve achieved. Not to mention that income is always a problem, all we have created so far we financed from our own savings, Ivan added.
The also explained that Grunner will have two different options, one for individual use and one as a public electric bike, an idea which caught the interest of the Slovenian association of innovators. In order to make the second option more efficient and readily available, they are preparing a network of charging stations: “We have charging stations for electric cars in our cities, which is great, and now imagine if we could offer tourists an option to use quiet and eco-friendly electric bikes to ride around cities and national parks. They would book them and pick them up in any of our charging stations. We also want to connect our bikes with the ISVUsystemm in order to enable our students to use their student data to unlock the bikes and use them to get to, for instance, their University to the student canteen and back” young innovator explains.
The plan is also to establish a monitoring system that would enable each user to check the condition of the bike before it is picked up and to check the location of the nearest charging station where the bike can be dropped off. The price of the finished bike will be 17 300 kn, which is quite affordable when compared to other e-bikes, especially when we consider its innovative characteristics.
Whenever he is not busy studying, working part-time or working on his bikes, Ivan spends his time in the Innovus Association which he recently founded: “The idea is to help young innovators and their projects because I know how hard it can be in the beginning. The goal is to entice those that may not have the means to get their project going but have the idea and the drive to join us and work with us on various innovations thus creating a better future for all of us” Ivan explains his future plans.
For the very same reason, he also started developing tutorials for subjects that are not studied enough and are required in order to create something new. His best encouragement to keep going forward is when he can see that he has helped someone.
“And I try to get some sleep every now and then” young Ivan Golubic concludes.
