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The speed of the prototype was slow.

The prototype is the starting point for the development of autonomous vehicles.

Research in this area will enable people with physical impairment to use a bicycle in the future.

Designing autonomous bicycles is a promising field of work for engineers.

The prototype was designed by Faculty of Engineering graduate student Mauro Alonso Baquero Suárez and could be considered a starting point in the development of autonomous and efficient vehicles, which could have good maneuverability at high speeds and movement in reduced spaces. 

“As a contribution to society, research in this area will help people with disabilities to use a bicycle, automatically guaranteeing stability and displacement,” said Baquero. 

According to Baquero, before proposing the control system he had to develop a mechatronic prototype and analyze its movement and behavior; then using mathematical formulas obtain a deterministic model (a mathematical model used in simulation) for the bicycle. 

The greatest technological innovation in this project was implementing an advanced mathematic control strategy called “active perturbation rejection in motion control” to stabilize a complex system such as a bicycle.” 

“There are many elements which try to destabilize a bike, therefore we should keep researching and working on its control. For the future we need to develop a complete prototype for this type of application. A commercial bicycle has many mechanical imprecisions which hinder the main control objective,” he said. 

Academically this application will be a great support in mechatronic engineering as mechanical design, control theory, instrumentation and system identification. 

Before developing the project they built a virtual bicycle prototype model to simulate the dynamics of multi-body systems which enabled kinematic and dynamic analysis of general mechanisms. This prototype was capable of introducing flexibility to the solids that are part of the system to obtain more accurate results, analyze vibrations, etc. 

The advanced control strategy was used on this vehicle which gained control of a virtual bicycle helping to develop a real stability control for the prototype. 

Developing this application had also helped analyze which are the most relevant features of embedded systems (product integrated systems which control one of more functions) for controllers to work in the manner they were designed. This will be essential for control development of other applications. 

According to Baquero, designing bicycles easier to handle could be a promising field of work if electric bicycle use is also considered.