Development of Bicycle Simulator with Tilt Angle Control Tilt Angle

Bicycles are a healthy and eco-friendly form of travel. Information about dangerous points (hazards) on roads is important for bicycle-riding safety. We proposed a method to detect road hazards using sensors attached to a bicycle in a prior conventional study. The conventional approach needs training data for machine learning, requiring the bicycle to travel over hazardous areas repeatedly. Not only is this is dangerous, it is also difficult to collect sufficiently large amounts of data. A bicycle simulator is a potential solution to this problem. Commercial bicycle simulators have been developed in Japan. However, the bicycle body is fixed, thus making the ride feel unnatural. This type of bicycle simulator is not suitable for gathering hazard data. We therefore propose a bicycle simulator capable of tilt angle control that runs in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual space. The built-in sensors send the speed and front-wheel angle information to the control unit. A new tilt angle is then calculated by the control unit and the information is sent to an AC servomotor to achieve this new tilt angle. Simultaneously, a 3D view of a virtual course is generated using the calculated results. By using our previously proposed rotation center tracking method, left and right steering actions can be observed by the system. This system allows for dangerous situations to be easily and repeatedly created with no danger to the rider.