Experimental Analysis of Sensor Requirements for eBike Rider Assistance Systems

The popularity of pedelecs increases rapidly, which leads to a demand of new safety and comfort systems. An indepth analysis of sensor performance and boundary conditions is crucial since many of these systems rely on trustworthy inertial sensor data. This paper is focused on such an analysis and based on that, requirements for the sensors can be derived. Different sensor types are used to collect acceleration and angular rate measurement results during critical riding situations in different mounting positions with up to 50 kHz sampling frequency. Several critical environmental disturbances are taken into account, such as stone chipping, cobblestones and stairs. Based on these data, an evaluation for the use of inertial sensors, especially angular rate sensors, for eBike rider assistance systems is done. Overall, these investigations enable the selection of the most suitable sensors, sensor types and mounting positions for particular upcoming assistance systems.