An amazing bike-riding robot created by Masahiko Yamaguchi: it can ride a fixed-gear bicycle. It can pedal with its own feet and keeps its balance just by using the handlebar. This means that the tiny robot drives the bike just like a human does. The robot’s name is “Primer v2”.
Interestingly, the creator of the robot has a similar name with the famous frame builder Koichi Yamaguchi.
Mr. Yamaguchi also built the robot’s fixed gear bicycle. Primer v2 is world’s first robot that capable of riding a bike like human. Too keep the robot its balance, a classic PID controller is used to calculate how far to turn the handlebar when the frame tilts. Yamaguchi also built the robot’s main board. He is using a remote control to control the robot’s direction. The robot has two speed.
This amazing bike-riding robot also stops by taking its feet from the pedals and placing them on the ground.
Can we see someday, a pizza delivery robot, or even a cycling race between robots? Maybe we will use the term “roboton” instead of “peloton”. At least, we can make sure that they will not dope 🙂
Bike-riding robot – video
Video of the robot can ride a bike:
The creator of the robot, Masahiko Yamaguchi says: “A feature of this robot is, it pedals the bike with its own legs, and keeps its balance just by using the handlebars. I think this is probably a world first.”
“I’m interested in artificial intelligence, and in that context, I think intelligence and skills have equal value. So, my purpose in creating this bike-riding robot was to pursue intelligence from the skills side.”
“While I was thinking of suitable topics, my local science museum demonstrated a cycling robot. So I decided to consider cycling as the skill, and build a bicycle robot.”
“There’s a control board in the backpack. That needed to have a high processing speed. So I made my own board using the SH7125 CPU core.”
“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 (hence the abbreviation PID) for the tilt, and adding them, the system calculates how far to turn the handlebars when the frame tilts.”
“Also, the robot needs to decide which direction to go in, so we use a remote control to instruct it.”
“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. Normally, that makes riding the bike difficult, but with this robot, it also has a braking effect, so a fixed-gear bicycle is more convenient.”
“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 completely by itself. This system is the first step toward doing that.”
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