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Kawasaki Prepping Camera System for Ninja H2 SX


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Kawasaki’s new patents show a nose-mounted camera with components from the latest-generation Ninja H2 SX.
Kawasaki’s new patents show a nose-mounted camera with components from the latest-generation Ninja H2 SX. (Japanese Patent Office/)

With the 2022 Ninja H2 SX, Kawasaki has already shifted the goal posts in terms of rider-assist technology with its arrangement of cleverly hidden front and rear radars, but there’s even more to come with the firm’s development of a camera-based system to work alongside the radar sensors.

The latest H2 SX has an imposing array of sensors including two radars, the front one enabling adaptive cruise control and collision warnings, and the rear creating a blind spot monitoring system. While not the first bike to get such kit—Ducati, BMW, and KTM are also offering radar-equipped bikes—the Ninja is the only one to hide its Bosch-made sensors behind radar-invisible panels, making for a cleaner, neater look. But while radars offer the ability to “see” objects even in the dark or in bad weather, their inability to sense color, light, and surface detail means that they’re not a perfect solution.

Look at most modern cars and you’ll see that they also have cameras mounted in the windshield to enable a host of additional technologies, and now Kawasaki is looking to adopt the same idea on bikes. The firm has filed patent applications for a camera mounted in a bike’s nose, clearly showing components from the latest generations of Ninja H2 SX.

Related: 2022 Kawasaki H2 SX Rear Radar Revealed

The camera would likely be placed behind the screen in a purpose-built panel on its own platform, near the steering head.
The camera would likely be placed behind the screen in a purpose-built panel on its own platform, near the steering head. (Japanese Patent Office/)

While patents alone are far from confirmation that a technology is nearing production, the new documents are just the latest part of the puzzle when it comes to Kawasaki’s camera technology. A year ago, the first spy pictures of the updated, 2022-spec Ninja H2 SX showed a prototype with exactly the same camera system explained in the new patent document. In those pictures, the camera was visible, mounted just behind the bike’s screen in a neatly finished, molded plastic panel. While missing on the initial production models, it’s clear that the camera has already been built and tested, making it extremely likely that future high-spec versions of the H2 SX will be fitted with the system.

Kawasaki’s patent explains some of the possibilities that the camera creates. Although focused on camera mounting points rather than the electronics, the document specifically says the camera can assist with the bike’s headlight. In its simplest terms, that means it could automatically switch between the main beam and low beam when it sees other vehicles. It also opens the door to more complex adaptive headlights, another tech that’s spreading fast in cars, that use multiple LEDs to illuminate the road ahead, automatically dimming small sections to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers without switching to low beam at all.

The goal is to give yet another layer of info to Kawasaki’s Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS), which already delivers adaptive cruise control, collision detection, and blind spot monitoring on the H2 SX.
The goal is to give yet another layer of info to Kawasaki’s Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS), which already delivers adaptive cruise control, collision detection, and blind spot monitoring on the H2 SX. (Kawasaki/)

That’s just one possibility of the system though. The patent also mentions it could help with the collision-mitigation system that the radar provides, recognizing obstacles such as other vehicles or pedestrians and automatically braking to avoid them. Although the radar system has some of this ability, a camera adds a whole additional layer of information. Radar-based collision mitigation can see if the distance between you and the car ahead starts to shrink, but a camera-based system may be able to spot and recognize brake lights, giving a potentially vital fraction of a second early warning.

Although the patent doesn’t detail other advantages, you only have to look at the camera systems in today’s cars to see where else bikes could benefit. Cameras allow road sign recognition, for instance, allowing on-dash reminders of speed limits or even letting adaptive cruise control systems modulate to react to changing limits. They can also recognize the difference between red and green traffic signals. At the most extreme, cameras are the basis of Tesla’s Autopilot and so-called “Full Self-Driving” hardware, using sophisticated object recognition to build a computer picture of the road ahead.

The 2022 H2 SX models are already fitted with tabs to accept the camera, so there’s good reason to believe we’ll see the system show up on a production bike soon.
The 2022 H2 SX models are already fitted with tabs to accept the camera, so there’s good reason to believe we’ll see the system show up on a production bike soon. (Japanese Patent Office/)

As well as the prototype seen testing the system last year, there are other clues that future H2 SX models will get the camera. Most notably, the latest-generation bike comes with the camera’s mounting brackets already fitted. Two tabs on top of the tubular instrument panel bracket bolted to the steering head, marked “53″ in the patent images, are used to give the camera a vibration-free platform to bolt to. Those tabs are present on the production 2022 H2 SX, and visible in Kawasaki’s parts fiches that show the same component, so adding the camera system as an option, or on future, improved versions of the bike is clearly already designed to be as simple as possible.

Patents suggest the camera system is designed to be fitted to future models in the most simple manner possible.
Patents suggest the camera system is designed to be fitted to future models in the most simple manner possible. (Japanese Patent Office/)

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