Japanese robot maker Masahiko Yamaguchi developed a bipedal bike-riding robot that may be the world’s first robot that can ride like a human.

The ‘Primer v2’ can balance, steer, and correct itself on a fixed-gear bicycle—it pedals with its own feet and keeps its balance by using the handlebars.

Yamaguchi modified a commercially-available two-legged robot to give it special joints, and made it a bicycle.

To detect how much the robot was tilting, a TAG201 gyroscope by Tamagawa Seiki was used. Based on the tilt data recorded, a method (PID control) is used to calculate how far the robot has to turn the handlebars to maintain its balance.

“PID control is a classical control method. It's used to calculate how far to turn the handlebars when the frame tilts. By calculating proportional, integral, and differential components for the tilt, and adding them, the system calculates how far to turn the handlebars when the frame tilts,” Yamaguchi said.

To instruct the Primer v2 on which direction to travel in, a remote control that’s linked up to a control board in the robot’s backpack is used.

“[The control board] needed to have a high processing speed, so I made my own board using the SH7125 CPU core,” Yamaguchi said.

The system has two speeds, and no brakes. To make it easier for the robot to stop, Yamaguchi chose a fixed-hear bike. To stop, the robot takes its feet off the pedals and places them on the ground—like a real human.

“With an ordinary bicycle, the rear wheel keeps turning even when you stop pedaling. But in a fixed-gear bike, there’s no ratcheting, so when you stop pedaling, the rear wheel stops, too. Ordinarily, that makes riding difficult, but with this robot, it also has a braking effect, so a fixed-gear bike is more convenient,” Yamaguchi said.

“From now on, I’d like to link this robot's skill to its intelligence. I personally don’t like using a remote control for the robot. I’d like to make the robot intelligent enough to ride by itself. This system is the first step toward doing that.”









[via designboom]


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