Steering compensation for high-performance motorcycles ...

.... is the title of a keynote lecture being given at Control 2004,
the paper being available from here:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/control04/Sessions_Preliminary.htm#00

 

Got to page two and my head exploded.

It's great that people understand the physics of a motorcycle so well,
but odd that almost none of the people who ride them do.

 

Not that odd: how many footballers or cricketers `understand' the
aerodynamics of a ball? They know what it will do because they've
got years of experience.

 

I have to sit down with a piece of paper to even start to understand
that stuff.
I'm amazed I seem to be able to do it in my head whilst riding.
I bet if I tried to think what I was doing I'd fall off.

 

AOL

 

And that so few of the people who understand the physics ride motorcycles
too. You'd think that such an elegantly superior way of balancing cornering
forces in a mode of transport would appeal to the tidy analytical mind.

Ivan excepted of course

 

If you could lean the bike far enough then you could chalk the equations on
the tarmac on left handers to help you out.

Might be trickier on right handers, though.

"Police admit to being baffled by the discovery of the chalked equation
'Z(s)=' on the A6, with the equal sign becoming a long chalk line ending in
a pile of motorcycle wreckage. A spokesman for the police said, 'At the
moment we believe it is a sick joke perpetrated by a witness to the
accident, although we're still considering the possibility that it may have
been a scientist with practical interests in motorcycles physics and the
afterlife'. Investigations continue".


--
AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
Kawasaki ZX-6R J1
BOTAFOT#2,ITJWTFO#6,UKRMRM#1/13a,MCT#1,DFV#2,SKoGA#0 (and KotL)
BotToS#5,SBS#25,IbW#34, TEAR#3 (and KotL), DS#5, COSOC#9, KotTFSTR#
The speccy Geordie twat.

 

I printed it out and made a paper aeroplane out of it.

The plane swerved left, dived right - and crashed.

IANAScientist, nor an engineer: but I find that if I start analysing
what's going on when I'm on the bike, that is the sure-as-shittiest
way to make damned sure that my riding will go to utter crap for the
next half hour. I'd rather let it flow and let the little
compensations take care of themselves.

That leaves a cell free for singing, anyway.

 

I guess so. We mostly learn stuff by repeated experience - watch a
small child play with pouring water from one container to another.
This is the analogy that 'learning' neural networks are based on.

 

I thought I was the only one left who did that. I often realise I am
getting funny looks from the cars either side when I am sat at the front
of the queue (in the dotted bike lane) but it was brought home the other
day when my daughter said "we knew it was you coming the other way cos
your head was wobbling".

My wife thinks of me every time she sees the "Bohemian Rhapsody" clip
from "Waynes World"

 

It gets a bit technical on pg 2, but nothing I've not seen before.

The trick now is to actually build a compensator with
those values (pg 4)...

 

Interesting. Cheers.

 

Yebbut, you're a clever scientist bloke. I'm nearly management, ffs!

 

So what did you learn by repeatedly watching a child pour water from one
container to another? Sicko.

 

I didn't say they weren't.

 

porl

And why is he watching them for so long in the first place?

 

Mike

You should have gone to Specsavers!

 

"And the defendant replied, "Neural networks are fascinating, aren't they?"
And then he attempted to bribe me with a sweet product known as a Werther's
Original. At this point the defendant was placed under arrest and read his
rights."

 

I went along to the talk although I couldn't stay for all of it. It
was absolutely excellent, starting with a very good account of
wobble/weave type accidents (police training, TT, Welkomm and a
private individual on a TL1000) and working up to an account of the
physics which was comprehensible to this engineer (who is not a
specialist in control theory).

He explained that the hard bit is building one which will fit a bike
and a biker's pocket.

 

Mike wrote

I do recall the tellybox telling me once that the simple act of judging
the flight of a cricket ball in order to run after and catch it required
continuous resolution of zillions of fourth order fourier transforms.

While I can only speculate as to whether this is the case it does rather
beg the question that, if true, why was Cooper "Sums" Minor so fucking
piss poor useless at first slip.