A rider-motorcycle system can be treated as a representative man-machine system in view of the major role that both the rider and the motorcycle play in determining the performance of the integrated system. Of interest in this work is the handling property which is crucial to safety during riding. In this study, a mathematical model of three-dimensional multi-body dynamics is constructed, which accounts for not only motorcycle dynamics but also the rider's posture change. Since a fuzzy controller is essentially a nonlinear process representing the qualitative knowledge of human experts on the behaviour of systems and desired control actions, a fuzzy control method is applied to determine a rider's handling action. The fuzzy controllerbased on fuzzy rules and fuzzy reasoning methods plays the role of the rider in a rider-motorcycle system. Accordingly, a rider-motorcycle system undergoing lane change is simulated. The time variation of steering angle, yaw rate, and lateral acceleration are demonstrated. Effects of yaw rate and lateral acceleration on handling propertyare examined based on Bode plots. (A)
Abstract