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news
Video: Chinese students invent bike that rides itself
There’s often an April Fools’ Day vibe to stories about riderless bikes. Google’s self-driving bicycle was one such story, but a team of students at Tsinghua University has done it for real. Here at road.cc we are, generally speaking, very much pro cyclist – that’s kind of the point of the website – but this is nevertheless quite an impressive feat.
The team has fitted an electric bicycle with steering and speed control. While a riderless bike will steer and right itself given enough momentum, this only succeeds in keeping it upright. It takes a lot more to achieve the same thing while also directing it where you want it to go.
In the video (from 2015), we see the lonely steed circling a track, bumping over small obstacles and riding on (not especially) rough terrain.
Quite why Tsinghua University is working on this project is beyond us. They don’t appear to have a shortage of cyclists in the area. The university recommends using a bicycle for on-campus transportation, and adds: “The morning bicycle jam on the roads to the classrooms has always been a sight to behold.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 2 sec ago
Think we've been here several times now! I would agree things are not black and white. But the effect in Wales has been measurable, shouty voices...
- OldRidgeback 9 min 57 sec ago
Yep, I didn't see that part of the story. It's an appalling case. A life ban from driving would be suitable here.
- imajez 25 min 53 sec ago
The important distinction here is that traffic lights are only needed for motor vehicles cars to stop drivers causing dangerous accidents. Cyclists...
- shiggy 44 min 1 sec ago
Kent Outdoors is NOT a Canadian company. It was based in Ohio USA until moving to Utah....
- mattw 55 min 48 sec ago
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the site: https://road.cc/content/news/hit-and-run-driver-without-licence-jailed-y...
- RoubaixCube 1 hour 32 min ago
Don't know how long you've been dish soap to wash your drive chain but dish soap and aluminium dont mix. It causes galvanic corrosion
- mattyb95 1 hour 31 min ago
Just collected it this week and that's exactly the end result, it's had the insides of the slit smoothed off and in the meanwhile I bought a Hope...
- Rendel Harris 2 hours 4 min ago
Well it pretty much does, a 70kg rider on an 11.6kg bike will need to put out 384W to climb a 10% gradient at 15km/h, to do it at the same speed on...
- Steve K 2 hours 24 min ago
Prompted by this thread, I've just bought a pair of the Swrve's. A couple of comments - ...
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Conclusion: If you want to simplify tyre maintenance tasks, stick to hooked rims and inner tubes. I'm a pro' bike mechanic, and I wouldn't choose...
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5 comments
pretty cool, but still nowhere near as good as the cycling robot...
https://youtu.be/mT3vfSQePcs
I'm sure I could think of all kinds of valid engineering questions to ask them, but mostly I want to know why they left the pedals on?
Which will kill us all first, hunter/seeker drones from Dune, or motorbike terminators from T4:the-one-in-the-desert-with-Bruce-Wayne-Chekov-and-that-dude-from-Avatar?
I soooo need this. Just to freak the neighbours out.
Send it out once a month at 3am with a speaker putting out satanic droning.
This is the future of Boris bikes!! Pick one up from a dock, ride it to where you want to be, then set it free to its own way back to the nearest dock! No more having to find a dock with a space to return it to