Inventory of bicycle motion for the design of a bicycle simulator

Many parents worldwide teach their children to ride abicycle. Training wheels are method to help the childto get used to being on the bicycle. However theychange the dynamics an the control of a bicycledrastically. Nonetheless a regular child picks it uprelatively fast, although a few trials are inevitable.Not all childeren learn to ride a bicycle this way.Children with down syndrome for example often havetrouble losing the training wheels. They wouldgreatly benefit from the existence of a bicyclesimulator with adjustable stability. A bicyclesimulator would also be usefull for physicalrehabilitation purposes.Constructing a bicycle simulator however is achallenge. A bicycle is a dynamic system that ismore complex than one would expect. The largestchallenge is how could a bicyclesimulator be constructed and what are the hardwarerequirements in terms of steer torque, roll angle,rate and acceleration etc? The research done in orderto find these requirements is described in this report.

Autorentext

I have always been curious about the way things work. One thingthat has amazed me from childhood on is bicycles. Later when Iwas a student at the Technical University of Delft I was inspiredby my teacher Arend Schwab and started thinking more aboutbicycle dynamics. I decided to choose bycicle dynamics as thesubject of my graduation research.