Title: Lightweight design and realisation of autonomously balancing bicycles based on additive manufacturing technology

Authors: Yizhi Wang; Yimeng Zhang; Bing Wang; Zhong Yang; Xingliu Hu; Lingyi Huang; Yang Zhang

Addresses: College of Intelligent Science and Control Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China; Fujian Key Laboratory of Functional Marine Sensing Materials, Minjiang University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China ' College of Intelligent Science and Control Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China ' College of Intelligent Science and Control Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China ' College of Intelligent Science and Control Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China ' College of Intelligent Science and Control Engineering, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China ' School of Pharmacy, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China ' Fujian Key Laboratory of Functional Marine Sensing Materials, Fujian Engineering and Research Centre of New Chinese Lacquer Materials and Fujian Provincial University Engineering Research Centre of Green Materials and Chemical Engineering, Minjiang University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China

Abstract: Lightweight design based on Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology enlightens the design and control of autonomously balancing bicycles. However, apart from increased energy efficiency by weight reduction, static and dynamic stability of bicycle body is degraded, which becomes a significant challenge of control system design. Therefore, in this research, taking autonomously balancing bicycle as a prototype, firstly alternative parts made in ABS, aluminium alloy and nylon through AM technology are proposed and realised. Experiment results show, compared to original design in stainless steel, 36.3% weight is reduced, mechanical characteristics are acceptable but stability is significantly degraded with the ABS-based alternatives. Further, the data fusion method was creatively introduced to control system design to pre-processing the data from gyroscope and accelerator. After tuning process, the designed method obtained a smoother control performance with faster dynamics to compensate the degradation of static and dynamic stability.

Keywords: lightweight design; additive manufacturing; autonomously balancing bicycles; data fusion method.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2023.131592

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2023 Vol.71 No.2, pp.89 - 99

Received: 16 Jun 2022
Received in revised form: 10 Aug 2022
Accepted: 23 Aug 2022
Published online: 20 Jun 2023 *

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