IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO.

1, JANUARY 2009 159

A Study on Straight-Line Tracking and

Posture Control in Electric Bicycle
Yasuhito Tanaka and Toshiyuki Murakami, Member, IEEE

Abstract—The development of automatic control for driving a
bicycle is a challenging theme and is expected to be a human assist
system. Previously, an acceleration-based method for stabilizing
bicycle posture was proposed by the authors. In the experiments
with this controller, the posture of the bicycle might be stabilized,
but it is impossible to run on the desired trajectory, because there
is no consideration with respect to a trajectory control. For the
sake of expanding this system into more sophisticated equipment,
a realization of the trajectory control for the bicycle is important.
From the viewpoint of an assist system for human motion, a unified
control of posture and trajectory brings a sophisticated function
to a bicycle, and a high-performance bicycle is expected to be a
convenient vehicle, similar to a small car. This paper proposes two
strategies to stabilize bicycle posture and trajectory control that
realizes a straight-line tracking: one is a lateral velocity controller,
and the other is a steering function controller. The validity of the
proposed approaches is evaluated by simulations and experiments.
Index Terms—Bicycle, inverted pendulum, line tracking
control, posture control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N THE RECENT age of advanced information society, it is
common for one to own a mobile terminal for private use.
New technologies are developed one after another under the
growth of digital society. Digitalization also makes progress
in bicycles. For example, a new bicycle headlight that detects
surrounding brightness and automatically turns on a light is
already in use. Electric bicycles that assist humans with the
pedal are also in practical use. In the near future, navigation
systems or Global Positioning System equipment may be ap-
plied to bicycles. However, bicycles have the defect of not being
able to stabilize their postures without human manipulation. In
any case, bicycles enhance human’s mobility and assist human
transportation; thus, although they are not capable of stabilizing
their postures, the production of a wide variety of sophisticated
bicycles that support, for instance, posture stabilization, pedal
driving, and navigation can be considered feasible.
The goal of this paper is to establish highly sophisticated
bicycle systems that support human motion in several aspects
and are expected to be safe vehicles, similar to small cars [20].
In this paper, as the first step, an electric bicycle system that
stabilizes its posture and follows the desired straight line is
studied.
A strict dynamic model of a bicycle called the Sharp model
was proposed by Sharp [2], and many research works based on
this model have been reported. The Sharp model is powerful but
complicated and includes many nonlinear terms. To improve
this issue, a linearized dynamic model of a bicycle is necessary
[3], [4], [14], [15]. In the proposed approach, an acceleration
control based on a disturbance observer is employed for the
steering control [12], [16]–[19]. Moreover, an acceleration-
control-based posture control is constructed for stabilization
control of the bicycle. Here, the proposed approach does not
consider any change in the person’s center of gravity (COG).
However, experiments have already been implemented when
the person is boarding the bicycle, and it is proven that the
proposed posture control is experimentally effective although
some COG change is present [11]. In this paper, the posture
controller is expanded by adding a trajectory controller as a
forward controller. In the proposed approach, first, a lateral
velocity controller is discussed. In this method, the lateral
deviation of the bicycle is utilized to generate the command of
the camber angle. The controller structure is simple and brings
easy implementation. Second, a steering function controller is
proposed. In this method, the controller is constructed based
on the trajectory parameters, i.e., the direction angle of the
bicycle and the curvature of the bicycle trajectory. Then,
the physical meaning of each feedback gain becomes clear.
The steering function controller has a similar structure as a
proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller, and the gain
adjustment is easy because of the clear physical meaning of
the feedback gains. This is one of the remarkable points of the
proposed controller.
In this paper, a simplified dynamics model of a bicycle is
introduced in Section II. Section III shows the control algo-
rithms that stabilize bicycle posture and realize straight-line
tracking. The validity of the proposed strategies is proven by the
simulation in Section IV. The experimental results are shown in
Section V. Finally, the conclusion is summarized in Section VI.
II. M ODELING

Manuscript received March 28, 2005; revised June 5, 2008. First published
July 9, 2008; current version published December 30, 2008.
The authors are with the Department of System Design Engineering,
Keio University, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan (e-mail: yasuhito@sd.keio.ac.jp;
mura@sd.keio.ac.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2008.927406
A. Equilibrium of Bicycle Posture
In the case of driving a bicycle with constant steering angle
and constant speed, the bicycle runs on a circular orbit. It
is known that the intensity of centrifugal force applied to a
running bicycle is determined by the radius of the circular orbit
and the bicycle velocity. Fig. 1 shows an overview of the bicycle

0278-0046/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE

160 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

Fig. 1. Bicycle coodinate.

Fig. 3. Relation between the direction angle and the circular orbit.

small, sin θ  θ, and cos θ  1. Equation (4) is rewritten as

TGR  −M ghθ. (5)

Using (3) and (5), the motion equation of the bicycle is

represented as follows:

(I + M h2 )θ̈ = TGR + FCF · h

Fig. 2. Camber angle.
coordinates. Here, L and φ are the wheelbase and steering
angle, respectively, and α1 and α2 are the slip angles of the
front and rear wheels, respectively. Assuming that the radius
of circular orbit R is much greater than L, R is approximately
represented as follows:
M hv 2
= − M ghθ + φ (6)
L
where I is the inertia moment of the bicycle around the ground
point. In the latter description, (6) is used for the controller
design. The model with a larger change in camber angle is
required in low-speed (less than 1.0 m/s) running of the bicycle.
The bicycle speed considered in this paper is about 2.0–3.0 m/s.
Then, it is assumed that the model given by (6) is enough. In
the running control with low speed, a nonlinear control that
has a different literature as this paper is powerful. In addi-
tion, the results with the nonlinear control have already been
shown in [13].

R = L cot(φ − α1 + α2 ). (1) B. Direction Angle and Lateral Velocity

If the side slip does not occur and steering angle φ is The bicycle direction angle in global coordinate is deter-
relatively small, R is written as mined by bicycle velocity v and steering angle φ. The relation
between direction angle ξ and the circular orbit is illustrated in
L Fig. 3. In Fig. 3, ξ(i) is the variation of the direction angle per
R= . (2)
φ unit time and is represented as follows:
Using (2), centrifugal force FCF can be represented as follows: v(i) dt v(i) dt
ξ(i) =  φ. (7)
R L
M v2 M v2
FCF = = φ (3) Integrating (7), the direction angle is derived as follows:
R L
where M is the whole mass of bicycle, and v is the bicycle T
v(t)
velocity. The inclination angle of the bicycle θ shown in Fig. 2 ξ = ξ(0) + φ(t)dt. (8)
L
is called the camber angle. Then, the torque by gravitational 0
force TGR is represented as a function of θ in
Assuming that bicycle velocity v is constant, (8) is rewritten as
TGR = −M gh sin θ (4)
T
v
where g and h are the gravitational constant and position of the ξ = ξ(0) + φ(t)dt. (9)
L
COG, respectively. Assuming that camber angle θ is relatively 0
TANAKA AND MURAKAMI: STUDY ON STRAIGHT-LINE TRACKING AND POSTURE CONTROL IN ELECTRIC BICYCLE 161

Fig. 4. Velocity vector.

The position vector of the lateral direction is set as x, and that

of the longitudinal direction is set as y. The velocity vectors
of the lateral and longitudinal directions are set as ẋ and ẏ,
respectively, as shown in Fig. 4. Here, ẋ can be represented by
direction angle ξ and bicycle velocity v, i.e.,
ẋ = v sin ξ.
Assuming that the direction angle of world coordinate ξ is
relatively small, (10) is rewritten as follows:
Fig. 5. Block diagram of the posture control method.
To avoid high-frequency noise, a low-pass filter is applied to
the calculation of (15). Then, the cut of frequency is selected
(10) to be large enough to ignore the time delay, compared to the
dynamic response of the bicycle. Using these commands and
steering responses, the reference of steering acceleration φ̈ref is
determined as follows:

ẋ  vξ. (11) φ̈ref = φ̈d + Kv (φ̇d − φ̇) + Kp (φd − φ) (16)

where Kp and Kv are the position and the velocity gains,

III. C ONTROL S TRATEGIES respectively. Assuming the ideal acceleration controller based
In this section, the proposed strategy for motion control of on the disturbance observer, i.e., φ̈ = φ̈ref , the transfer function
the bicycle is described. First, the posture controller of the from φd to φ is given by
bicycle is shown. Second, two strategies for trajectory control
φ s2 + Kv s + Kp
are proposed. = 2 =1 (17)
φd s + Kv s + Kp

A. Posture Controller and the perfect tracking with respect to φ is achieved. From
(13), (14), and (17), the desired gains Kp and Kv are selected.
From (6), it is found that camber angle θ depends on steering It is known that the position error due to the disturbance
angle φ, which may stabilize the bicycle posture by steering occurs in motion response with only the proportional–derivative
its handle. Considering the desired camber angle θd that deter- (PD) controller. To diminish the disturbance, the disturbance
mines the desired steering angle φd given by observer is applied to the steering motor. The PD controller
with the disturbance observer makes it possible to realize the
φd = K1 (θd − θ) − K2 θ̇ (12)
ideal acceleration controller [12], [16]–[19]. From the preced-
where K1 , K2 , and θd are the position gain, velocity gain, ing discussion, the block diagram of the posture controller is
and command of the camber angle, respectively, the transfer summarized in Fig. 5. Here, Ih is the inertia of the steering
function from θd to θ is represented as axis. From Fig. 5, the transfer function of the posture controller
is represented as follows:
θ BK1
= 2 , θ (s2 + Kv s + Kp )(BK1 )
θd s + BK2 s + A + BK1 = 2 . (18)
2
θd (s + Kv s + Kp )(s2 + BK2 s + A + BK1 )
M gh M hv
A= ; B= . (13)
I + M h2 L(I + M h2 )
B. Lateral Velocity Controller
Equation (13) is rewritten as
As described before, the proposed posture controller stabi-
ωn2 − A lizes the bicycle posture without consideration of the bicycle
G(s) = 2 . (14) trajectory, so the bicycle path may not be controlled. This
s + 2ζωn s + ωn2
causes oscillating or unstable trajectory. To achieve a stable
From (13) and (14), K1 and K2 can be selected according to trajectory response of the bicycle, the command of the camber
the desired pole assignment as K1 = (ωn2 − A)/B and K2 = angle θd is generated according to the trajectory response of the
(2ζωn )/B, respectively. From the time differentiation of φd , bicycle.
φ˙d and φ¨d can also be calculated as follows: The command value of the velocity vector of lateral direction
ẋref is defined as follows:
d d2
φ̇d = φd φ̈d = φd . (15)
dt dt2 ẋref = Kx (xcmd − x). (19)
162 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

Here, Kx is the proportional gain, and xcmd is the position

command of the target trajectory. By using (11) and (19), the
command of the direction angle ξcmd is determined as follows:

ẋref = vξcmd
ẋref Kx (xcmd − x)
ξcmd = = . (20)
v v
Fig. 6. Block diagram of lateral velocity controller.
In the case that the centrifugal force equilibrates with the
effect of gravity, the acceleration of the bicycle inclination θ̈ In (25), gain Kx is set to a positive value. The block diagram
becomes zero, i.e., θ̈ = 0. The acceleration response of the of the lateral velocity controller is illustrated in Fig. 6. Here,
camber angle has little effect on the posture controller, even D = 1/g.
if it is not assumed to be zero. However, it is necessary to
consider it to improve the transient state of the camber angle.
C. Steering Function Controller
The improvement of transient state is one of the future works
although the posture controller is stable. The steering angle φ The lateral velocity controller is a method that generates the
in equilibrium state is derived from (6) as follows: command of the camber angle θd according to lateral velocity ẋ.
The control structure is simple, but the robustness of the con-
v2 gL v2 troller is not enough. To address this issue, the steering function
−M ghθ + M h φ = 0, φ= θ; θ= φ. (21)
L v2 gL controller, which uses the position of lateral direction x, direc-
tion angle ξ, and curvature κ, is proposed. Before discussing
Substituting (21) into (9), the steering function controller, two additional parameters are
introduced. One is curvature κ, which is defined by using the
T radius of circular orbit R as follows:
v
ξ = ξ(0) + φ(t)dt
L
1 φ
0
κ=  . (26)
T R L
g
= ξ(0) + θ(t)dt (22) The other parameter is path length s, which is defined by using
v
0 bicycle velocity v as follows:

is derived. From (22), the following equations are obtained: T

s= v(t)dt. (27)
T
g 0
ξcmd = ξcmd(0) + θd (t)dt
v
0 Substituting curvature κ to (8) and differentiating it with respect
g to path length s, curvature κ can be represented by direction
ξ˙cmd = θd
v angle ξ and path length s as follows:
v
θd = ξ˙cmd . (23) T
g v(t)
ξ = ξ(0) + φ(t)dt
L
Differentiating (20) with respect to time t and substituting it to 0
(23), the command of the camber angle θd is derived as follows:
T
ẍref Kx (ẋcmd − ẋ) = ξ(0) + v(t)κ(t)dt
ξ˙cmd = =
v v 0
v˙ dξ
θd = ξcmd κ= . (28)
g ds
v Kx (ẋcmd − ẋ)
= · . (24) Here, the derivative of the curvature by path length dκ/ds
g v
is called the steering function. This steering function is used
Assuming that a bicycle posture is stable like a four-wheel car to generate a control input in the controller. Then, steering
[21], [22], the transfer function from the position command in function dκ/ds is set as follows:
lateral direction xcmd to the position of lateral direction x is dκ
represented as follows: = −aκ − b(ξ − ξcmd ) − c(x − xcmd ). (29)
ds
x BK1 Kx Here, a, b, and c are positive constants, and ξcmd is the angle
= 2 . (25)
xcmd (s + K1 Bs + A + BK1 )(s + Kx ) of the target straight line. In the case that the angle of target
TANAKA AND MURAKAMI: STUDY ON STRAIGHT-LINE TRACKING AND POSTURE CONTROL IN ELECTRIC BICYCLE 163

straight line ξcmd and xcmd are zero, steering function dκ/ds
becomes
dκ
= −aκ − bξ − cx. (30)
ds
To select appropriate gains of positive constants a, b, and c, (30)
is rewritten as a first-order equation of the system. Here, bicycle
direction angle ξ is geometrically represented as follows:

dx Fig. 7. Block diagram of the steering function controller.

ξ = tan−1 . (31)
dy From (38), steering function dκ/ds is also determined. To
In the case that the bicycle follows a straight line, the moving integrate steering function dκ/ds, the command of the steering
distance of the longitudinal direction becomes much longer angle φd is derived as follows:
than that of the lateral direction, and bicycle direction angle ξ dκ 1 dκ 1 dφ
is approximated as follows: = · = ·
ds v dt vL dt
dx dx T
ξ = tan−1  . (32) dκ
dy dy φd = vL dt
ds
0
Similarly, the derivative of path length s is approximated by the
moving distance of the longitudinal direction y. Curvature κ T
and steering function dκ/ds are represented by the derivative of = vL (−aκ − bξ − cx)dt. (39)
the moving distance of the longitudinal direction y as follows: 0

dξ dξ Substituting (39) to (21), the command of the camber angle can

κ=  (33) be calculated as
ds dy
dκ dκ v2
= − aκ − bξ − cx  . (34) θd = φd
ds dy gL
From (32)–(34), the first-order equation of the system is de- T
rived as v3
= (−aκ − bξ − cx)dt. (40)
⎡ ⎤ g
0 1 0 0
X = ⎣ 0 0 1 ⎦ X = AX Applying θd that was derived from (40), the steering function
−c −b −a controller stabilizes both the bicycle posture and the trajectory.
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
0 1 0 x(y) The block diagram of the steering function controller is illus-
A≡⎣ 0 0 1 ⎦ X ≡ ⎣ ξ(y) ⎦ . (35) trated in Fig. 7. Here, D = v 3 /g.
−c −b −a κ(y)

Here,  indicates the derivative of the moving distance of the IV. S IMULATION
longitudinal direction y. The characteristic equation of A is A. Straight-Line Tracking
given as follows:
Simulations are performed to prove the validity of the three
det[λI − A] = λ + aλ + bλ + c = 0.
3 2
(36) controllers mentioned in the previous section. In the simulation,
a straight path is assumed to be a target trajectory. For compar-
To obtain the condition of asymptotic stability, the eigenvalues ison, three kinds of simulations, i.e., posture controller, posture
λ in (36) must be negative numbers. Assuming that (36) is controller with lateral velocity controller, and posture controller
rewritten as with steering function controller, are performed. Bicycle veloc-
ity v is set to 2.5 m/s. Camber angle θ and steering angle φ are
(λ + k)3 = 0, k > 0. (37) set to 0◦ . Direction angle ξ is set to 2◦ , and lateral position x is
set to −0.3 m at the initial state.
eigenvalues λ are selected as negative numbers. Parameter k is In the simulation, a stepwise external force with a magnitude
a positive real number. By using k, a, b, and c can easily be of 100 N is imposed on the bicycle system for 20 ms at 100 ms
obtained, i.e., in the camber direction. Here, ζ = 1, and ωn = 8 in (14). Other
bicycle parameters are shown in Table I. The selected gains
(λ + k)3 = λ3 + 3kλ2 + 3k 2 λ + k 3
are summarized in Table II. In the proposed approach, the
= λ3 + aλ2 + bλ + c acceleration controller of the bicycle steering has higher gains
= 0, compared to the lateral velocity/steering function controller.
a = 3k; b = 3k 2 ; c = k 3 . (38) The gains of the acceleration controller Kp and Kv are selected
164 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM

TABLE II
GAINS OF THE CONTROLLER

Fig. 9. Bicycle trajectory of the posture controller.

Fig. 10. Camber angle and steering angle of the lateral velocity controller.

Fig. 8. Camber angle and steering angle of the posture controller.

according to the dynamic range of the bicycle steering (about

5 Hz). The controller gains are designed based on the second-
order motion equation. In addition, practical values of each
gain are experimentally adjusted according to the system noise.
In particular, the observer gain is selected to be large enough
according to the system noise. The sampling ratio is 1 ms.
The simulation results of the posture controller are shown in
Figs. 8 and 9. Figs. 10 and 11 show the results of the posture Fig. 11. Bicycle trajectory of the lateral velocity controller.
controller with the lateral velocity controller. In Figs. 12 and 13,
the simulation results of the posture controller with the steering 3) In the posture controller with the lateral velocity con-
function controller are shown. From these results, four issues troller, the trajectory response is improved without deteri-
are found. orating the posture response, but the position error of the
1) The camber angle converges to 0◦ in all strategies. trajectory is still observed.
2) The posture controller itself achieves the shortest conver- 4) In the posture controller with the steering function con-
gence time to stabilize the bicycle’s posture. However, the troller, both the posture and the trajectory control are
position error appears in the trajectory response. successfully achieved.
TANAKA AND MURAKAMI: STUDY ON STRAIGHT-LINE TRACKING AND POSTURE CONTROL IN ELECTRIC BICYCLE
Fig. 12. Camber angle and steering angle of the steering function controller.
Fig. 13. Bicycle trajectory of the steering function controller.
B. Circle Path Tracking by the Steering Function Controller
As mentioned in the previous section, the steering function
controller uses the position of lateral direction x, direction angle
ξ, and steering angle φ to obtain the desired straight trajectory.
In addition, the proposed controller makes it possible to realize
the arbitrary trajectory by changing position command xcmd
and direction angle ξcmd . In this paper, the simulation of a
circle path is performed by changing xcmd and ξcmd . In the
simulation of the straight-line trajectory, position error e is set
as e = xcmd − x, but e is determined by
π    through a wire. To measure the bicycle lateral position, a
y − tan − ξcmd x − ycmd + tan π2 − ξcmd xcmd
e= 2
 
1 + tan2 π2 − ξcmd
(41)
in the simulation of circle path tracking. The command of
the target circle path and the trajectory response are shown in
Fig. 14.
From Fig. 14, the position error is observed, but the bicycle
follows the target circle path. This means that the bicycle may
follow the curved trajectory by applying time-variant com-
mands xcmd and ξcmd to the steering function controller.
165
Fig. 14. Simulation result of the circle trajectory.
Fig. 15. Electric bicycle.
V. E XPERIMENT
Fig. 15 shows the experimental system of the bicycle. As
shown in Fig. 15, the bicycle system is a general bicycle with
two electric motors. One motor is attached to the top of the
handle for steering control. The other is attached to the back
side of the bicycle for driving. The driving motor of the rear
wheel can be actuated independently of the pedal and the chain
mechanism. A gyro sensor is also attached to the bicycle. This
sensor detects camber angle θ and direction angle ξ every
16 ms. The bicycle runs on the roller with a width is 0.5 m.
When the rear roller rotates, the front roller is also rotated
position-sensitive detector is adopted. This sensor consisted of
a LED and a camera that detects the lateral position by moni-
toring the movement of the LED. Here, the LED is attached to
the back side of the bicycle.
For a realization of real-time control, RTLinux is employed
in the control system as an operating system. The sampling ratio
of the controller is 1 ms. The experiments are continued until
the bicycle runs out from the roller.
In the experiments, comparison studies of all three kinds
of approaches are shown. Figs. 16–21 show the experimental
results. Here, the same gains shown in Table II are used in the
experiments.
166 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
Fig. 16. Camber angle of the posture controller.
Fig. 17. Bicycle trajectory of the posture controller.
Fig. 18. Camber angle of the lateral velocity controller.
From the experimental results, four issues are found.
1) All three kinds of controller make the bicycle motion
stable when the side slip due to bicycle roller is ignored.
2) In the experiment of the posture controller, the bicycle
runs on the roller about 37 m for about 15 s. However,
the divergence tendency appears because of the side slip
motion.
3) In the experiment of the posture controller with the lateral
velocity controller, the command of the camber angle θd
Fig. 19. Trajectory of the lateral velocity controller.
Fig. 20. Camber angle of the steering function controller.
Fig. 21. Bicycle trajectory of the steering function controller.
is changed according to the position of lateral direction x,
and the bicycle runs on the roller about 50 m for about
20 s. However, the divergence tendency is still observed.
4) In the experiment of the posture controller with the
steering function controller, the position error is observed
because of the unknown disturbance, but the bicycle
stably runs on the roller without divergence of its tracking
TANAKA AND MURAKAMI: STUDY ON STRAIGHT-LINE TRACKING AND POSTURE CONTROL IN ELECTRIC BICYCLE
path. This means that the steering function controller
is more robust against the road disturbance, i.e., the
side slip.
The experimental results show that the steering function con-
troller is more powerful than the lateral velocity controller in
straight-path tracking of the bicycle, keeping the stable posture
of the bicycle.
In the experiments, the observer gain is selected to be large
enough to ignore the time delay compared to the camber re-
sponse of the bicycle. Of course, there are some coupling effects
between the trajectory controller and the posture controller. In
the proposed steering function controller, the controller is con-
structed based on the trajectory parameters, i.e., the direction
angle of the bicycle and the curvature of the bicycle trajectory.
Then, the physical meaning of each feedback gain becomes
clear. The steering function controller has a similar structure as
a PID controller, and the gain adjustment is easy because of the
clear physical meaning of the feedback gains. The instability
behavior does not appear in the experiment of the steering
function controller, as shown in Fig. 20. However, in the lateral
velocity control and the posture control only, the instability
behavior is observed. In the running bicycle experiment, the
bicycle roller is employed as a running road. In the bicycle
roller, the side slip of the bicycle tire that is unusual in the
general road surface arises, and it causes the side slip motion of
the bicycle. The lateral velocity control and the posture control
only are not able to compensate this side slip motion, and the
instability responses of trajectory appear in the experiments,
even if the posture control is stable.
From the simulation and experimental results, it is found that
the difference between simulations and experimental responses
appears. The effect of the tire feature and the sprocket chain
structure cause this difference. The tire feature has high non-
linearity, and it is difficult to employ the dynamic model in the
control algorithm, because the motion equation must be of high
order. In particular, the tire feature is related to the problem of
the side slip phenomenon. This consideration is more difficult.
To simplify the bicycle model, the tire feature is ignored in the
proposed approach. The introduction of the tire model is one of
our next challenges for high-performance bicycle control. Then,
it is also expected that the simulations are well concise with the
experimental responses. In the experiment, the gyro sensor is
utilized to detect the camber response. The detection period is
16 ms although the sampling ratio of the controller is 1 ms. This
makes it difficult to set a high gain of k in the steering function
controller and causes the response delay, as shown in Figs. 13,
20, and 21. The improvement of the sensor response is also an
important issue from an alternative aspect.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a simplified dynamic model of a bicycle and
a kinetic model of the bicycle trajectory have been derived.
Moreover, an acceleration-based bicycle controller has been
proposed. First, a controller that may stabilize bicycle posture
has been introduced. Second, two strategies for the bicycle
trajectory control have been proposed. The validity of the pro-
posed approaches is confirmed by simulations and experiments.
167
In particular, the continuous driving of the bicycle is achieved
by using the steering function controller, which is expected to
be applicable to not only the straight-line trajectory but also the
curved trajectory.
In past research, there are a few papers that show experi-
mental evaluation for the self-sustaining control of a bicycle. In
addition, the fusion strategy of the trajectory and self-sustaining
control has not been investigated from the viewpoint of a human
assist system. In this paper, however, the bicycle controller that
achieves both the stable posture and trajectory control has been
experimentally confirmed. This means that the feasibility and
the industrial contribution to realize the sophisticated bicycle
with human assist function are strongly expected by the pro-
posed strategy.
Because it is difficult to model the nonlinear characteristics
of the tire and the state change in the road, this paper has
not considered them in the proposed method; however, even if
they are not strictly considered in the experimental results, the
proposed method was able to achieve stabilization control. To
further achieve high accuracy about the control characteristic, it
is necessary to consider the tire characteristic. It is considered
to be a future task for this point.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their
patience and recommendations.
R EFERENCES
[1] Y. Oda, M. Miyamoto, K. Uchiyama, and G. Shimizu, “Study on the
autonomous run by integrated control of bicycle,” in Proc. JSME 11th
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Yasuhito Tanaka received the B.E. and M.E. de-
grees from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in
2003 and 2005, respectively.
He is currently with the Department of System
Design Engineering, Keio University. His research
interests include robotics, intelligent bicycles, and
motion control.
Toshiyuki Murakami (M’93) received the B.E.,
M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1988,
1990, and 1993, respectively.
In 1993, he joined the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Keio University, where he is currently
a Professor with the Department of System Design
Engineering. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Visiting
Researcher with The Institute for Power Electronics
and Electrical Drives, Aachen University of Tech-
nology, Aachen, Germany. His research interests in-
clude robotics, intelligent vehicles, mobile robots, and motion control.