Stabilizing an Urban Semi-Autonomous Bicycle

A comprehensive and a deep analysis on how to stabilize an urban semi-autonomous bicycle was carried out. Its more relevant aspects are presented in this paper. The resulting stabilized bicycle is intended to serve as a future evolution for the current bike-share programs. This bicycle would go to meet the user autonomously, and after that it could be used by the rider in the traditional fashion. Therefore, the resulting system must be stable throughout the entire operating speed range and must be rideable by a person when used in manual mode. A study of bicycle dynamics and stability control has led the way followed throughout this investigation. Consecutively, all the examined aspects are applied to introduce a few alternatives for solving the stability problem. One of them, the Alnilam concept, is further developed to unveil its possibilities. Furthermore, it has been successfully tested in a multibody co-simulation using Adams and Simulink, thus illustrating its behavior and testing its performance. The results of this simulation are very promising and encouraging to further develop this concept.