senior design project
general information
Project Description: The most difficult part of learning to ride a bicycle for many people is creating enough momentum through pedaling in order to allow the bike to stabilize itself. Once a rider learns how to mount a bicycle and distribute his or her weight, the rest is up to the natural physics of the wheels, seat, pedals, brakes and handlebars. Imagine if this most difficult task was eased by taking away the necessity of stabilizing oneself.
Understanding the physics of a bicycle is much more in depth a problem than one might think considering how common the device is in everyday life. When a bike is falling out of balance, it is as if the bicycle is making a circle to the side of the fall, pulling the bike towards the center of that circle, sometimes referred to as the "circle of fall." In order to keep from falling into the circle of fall (i.e. crashing), the rider has to create a counter-pull out of the fall. There are two ways a rider can create this counter-pull to overcome the fall. One choice is to quickly speed up the bicycle. The other is to quickly tighten (shorten) the radius of the circle of fall. Experienced riders instinctively do both as required. What we propose to do is create the counter-pull necessary to allow for the rider to remain upright.
When someone learns to ride a bike using training wheels, they teach themselves how much force is required to propel themselves forward, how hard one must brake to stop, and also the general mechanics of the steering of a bike. There is a giant step from here to learn to balance oneself while accounting for those other factors once the training wheels have been removed. Our balance-assist can create the intermediary step and allow the rider to become more confident in their ability to control the bike and ultimately learn to ride the bike with no assist. We plan to have certain degrees of assist so that, as one progresses, they may be able to have less of a counter-pull automatically generated so that they may be able to compensate themselves.
Beyond teaching someone how to ride a bicycle, the balance assist also has application in rehabilitation of people with inner ear problems (which can cause a deficiency in the ability to self-balance) or other debilitating injuries and also in aiding the elderly who have lost their confidence in their ability to self-balance.
As a senior design project, this project encompasses many areas of engineering. General dynamic physics is involved in determining the motion of a bicycle. The problem of balancing a bicycle is directly comparable to the classic nonlinear control systems problem of the inverted pendulum. There is a great mechanical aspect of this problem in devising mounting methods and mass distribution of our balance assist. Lastly, there is a project management aspect of the project that involves time-management, money-management, and teamwork that are all well accounted for by our proposal.
Instructor: Thaddeus Roppel
Email: roppeth AT auburn.edu
Office Phone: (334) 844-1814
Website: http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~troppel/
reports and documentation
Proposal Report
Proposal Presentation
Cycle 1 Report
Cycle 1 Presentation
Cycle 2 Report
Cycle 2 Presentation
Circuit Schematic
Poster
Source Code (Atmel Atmega328 Embedded C)
Status Reports
Meeting Agendas