Sustainability, Vol. 9, Pages 866: Improving Energy Efficiency of an Autonomous Bicycle with Adaptive Controller Design (Sustainability)

A method is proposed to achieve lateral stability of an autonomous bicycle with only the rotation of the front wheel. This can be achieved with a classic controller. However, if the energy consumption of the bicycle also has to be minimized, this solution is not valid. To solve this problem, an adaptive controller has been designed, which modifies its gains according to the bicycle`s forward velocity, adapting its response with minimum energy consumption and satisfying the design specifications. The study demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed control, achieving an energy saving of 73 . 8 % in trajectory tracking with respect to a conventional proportional-integral ( P I ) controller. These results show the importance of designing energy-efficient controllers, not only for autonomous vehicles but also for any automatic system where the energy consumption can be minimized.