Design and development of 6-DOF system for Virtual Bicycle

Abstract

There are many variations to the competition that takes place in Olympic track cycling. Hence, a bicycle simulator will bring a lot of benefits to the coaches and the athletes in a practical training. It is extremely low cost compared to a real Velodrome track which is required long construction time due to the unique geometry and size. In this project, a 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) motion platform is designed and developed to simulate the Velodrome track cycling. The parallel manipulator was chosen to control the moving platform because of higher accuracy and greater weight to strength ratio compare to serial manipulator. The 6-DOF platform is controlled by linear actuators and micro-controller. An optical encoder was installed for closed-loop position feedback control. An inverse kinematics model was developed to obtain the movement of the platform, and it was validated with its CAD model. Besides, a design feasibility program was developed to calculate the optimum design dimension of the motion platform. All the positions (3-axes) and orientations (3-rotational axes) data are tracked for analysis purpose. A lab-scale prototype was successfully built for the analysis and validation purpose. A standard Velodrome track dimensions was chosen to be simulated. On the other hand, a gyro accelerometer was installed at the platform to acquire the actual motion of the platform. The data will be used to validate the control algorithms and accuracy of the motion platform. The experiment was conducted and the results are analyzed for further development.