Cosmo Connected

Cosmo Connected
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Connected safety hardware, micromobility, Augmented Reality
Founded	2015
Founder	Charles Pingree
Headquarters	Paris, France
Notable Personnel	Romain Afflelou (CEO)
Products	Connected helmets, smart lights, heads-up display glasses
Website	https://cosmoconnected.com

Cosmo Connected is a French company that designs connected safety equipment for urban micromobility, including illuminated helmets, smart brake and signal lights, and a pair of Augmented Reality heads-up display glasses called the Cosmo Vision. The company was founded in Paris in 2015 and built its reputation on helmet-mounted lights that add a brake light, turn signals, and automatic crash alerts to bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles. Its move into wearable displays came through the Cosmo Vision, a cycling-focused HUD eyewear announced in late 2021 that uses the ActiveLook see-through display platform, which is why the company is catalogued among augmented reality manufacturers.

The business is best understood as a road-safety company rather than a dedicated XR firm. Most of its catalog is helmets and lighting, and the Cosmo Vision is its single product that projects information into the wearer's line of sight, placing it at the edge of the consumer AR market alongside other lightweight data glasses.

History

Cosmo Connected was founded in Paris in August 2015 by Charles Pingree. Romain Afflelou, who had previously led the digital strategy of the family eyewear group Alain Afflelou, joined the company in 2016 and became its chief executive and a major shareholder. The startup's first idea was to make motorcyclists and cyclists more visible and to get help to them faster after a crash, by clipping a smart light onto the back of a helmet.

The earliest products were the Cosmo Moto, a connected brake light for full-face motorcycle helmets that was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2017, and the Cosmo Bike (also marketed as Cosmo Ride), a helmet light for cyclists and scooter riders. Both used an internal accelerometer to brighten on deceleration and could trigger turn signals, and both connected to a phone app that would alert chosen contacts, and optionally emergency services, if it detected a fall and the rider did not respond within three minutes. The company exhibited at CES in Las Vegas for several consecutive years from the late 2010s and won a CES Innovation honor for its connected lighting.

By the end of the 2010s the company reported having sold around 30,000 helmet lights across 11 countries and said its technology was patented in many markets. Its connected helmet was selected to equip the roughly 3,500 driving schools of the French Code Rousseau network, and the firm also struck distribution and safety deals, including arrangements with Toyota Tsusho for parts of Asia and a courier-safety program with Uber Eats in several United States cities.

In 2022 Cosmo Connected raised about 6 million euros to expand and develop new products, and it followed that with an equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube that passed 1.1 million euros within a day of opening in July 2022. The same year its connected bicycle helmet, the Cosmo Fusion, was named one of the standout innovations at the VivaTech show in Paris.

Technology

Cosmo Connected's safety lights pair simple hardware with phone-based services. An accelerometer detects braking or hard deceleration and intensifies a rear light, while a handlebar remote or automatic GPS cues drive turn-signal LEDs. The same sensors feed a fall-detection routine in the companion app that geolocates the rider and notifies emergency contacts if a crash is detected, a feature the company markets as automatic SOS.

For the Cosmo Vision glasses the company licensed ActiveLook, a see-through display platform developed by the Grenoble company Microoled. ActiveLook combines optics, lenses, electronics, and a small monochrome OLED-on-silicon microdisplay (304 by 256 pixels) that consumes under a milliwatt and weighs only a few grams, projecting data into the upper part of one lens without blocking the view of the road. Because the heavy lifting is handled by ActiveLook and a paired smartphone over Bluetooth Low Energy, the glasses can stay close to the weight and shape of ordinary sport sunglasses while showing speed, distance, turn-by-turn navigation, turn-signal status, and battery level.

Products

Cosmo Connected's lineup is dominated by helmets and lights, with the Cosmo Vision as its one wearable-display product.

Product	Year	Type	Notes
Cosmo Moto	2017	Connected helmet brake light (motorcycle)	Crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2017; accelerometer-triggered brake light and crash alerts for full-face helmets
Cosmo Bike / Cosmo Ride	2018	Connected helmet light (cycling, scooters)	Helmet-mounted light with brake light, turn signals, and app-based fall detection; launched around 2018
Cosmo Fusion	2022	Connected helmet	Lightweight urban helmet with built-in connected rear lighting and turn indicators; highlighted at VivaTech 2022
Cosmo Vision	2021 (announced), 2022 (shipped)	Augmented Reality HUD glasses	ActiveLook see-through display by Microoled; monochrome 304x256 microdisplay; about a 10-degree field of view; IP54; photochromic lenses; gesture control; roughly 12-hour battery, 3-hour charge; priced at 489 euros (about 555 US dollars)

Market position

Within the VR and AR landscape Cosmo Connected sits in the narrow niche of lightweight, single-purpose AR glasses, where a small monocular display adds navigation and ride data to otherwise normal eyewear rather than running apps or rendering 3D scenes. That puts the Cosmo Vision in the same broad category as other ActiveLook-powered sport sunglasses and contrasts it with display-mirroring or spatial-computing glasses from companies such as Xreal. Outside XR, the company is positioned primarily as a road-safety brand for the growing micromobility market, with most of its revenue coming from connected helmets and lights.