Experimental Study on Low-Speed Control for Motorcycles Using SPACAR Model and Gain-Scheduling Control

Recently, many studies have presented on realizing novel mobility technologies with consideration for aging society. The aim of these studies is to establish autonomous driving technology (ADT). The objects of ADT are mainly four-wheel motor vehicles. On the other hand, ADT for motorcycles has not been fully addressed yet. Motorcycles have straight-line stability in the state of high-speed driving. However, their stability tends to diminish when being driven at extremely low speed. This study addresses how a motorcycle should be stabilized under low-speed driving. From the viewpoint of actual use, including high-speed driving, major structural changes should be avoided. In order to obtain a linearized motorcycle model without skidding, a model based on SPACAR, a finite element method computation program, is introduced. Furthermore, velocity-dependent gain-scheduling control is applied to utilize the feedback control gains obtained by the linearized model with respect to velocity. Following the deceleration simulation success in the authors’ previous paper, we mainly verify the experimental investigation of the above model and control system design. The gain-scheduling method is improved from that in the previous simulation study. The experimental responses show stable driving at 1.5 km/h.