TrailBlazer

Electromechanical Design

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September 2018 - April 2019

TrailBlazer is a stationary mountain bike simulator that aims to emulate the sensations of specifically downhill mountain biking, something not yet commercially available in other stationary bikes.

Project Overview

For my capstone design project, a team of five of my peers and myself completed TrailBlazer, an electromechanical system and stationary rig designed to replicate the experience of mountain biking for the user. The final product consisted of three major subsystems--a pitch subsystem, a vibration subsystem, and a passive roll subsystem--as well as two minor subsystems--a pedal resistance system and the stationary base frame.

Contributions

For this project, I was responsible for the system controls and electronics, stakeholder research, and safety standards and best practices. I additionally contributed to data processing and analysis. In particular, my efforts were devoted to actuating the pitch subsystem to accurately reflect the angular accelerations and jerks of a mountain bike ride, and introducing preliminary VR capabilities.

Technical Details

The pitch system consists of active and passive portions, the active portion being actuated by a pneumatic cylinder and the passive portion supporting the load of the mechanism with large springs. The passive portion is the same design used to enable the passive roll system. The passive roll system allows the user to lean side to side, which is a common movement performed in downhill mountain biking for cornering. The vibration subsystem is actuated by an AC eccentric rotating mass motor. The pedal resistance subsystem provides the user with a sense of work and motion; this subsystem is comprised of a modified off-the-shelf-fluidic pedal resistance system. The base frame consists of square steel tubing and prevents the mechanism from tipping while in use.

For controlling the actuation and implementing the visual components, the control system architecture was selected according to what instruments and methods were compatible with the critical mechanical systems, in particular the pneumatic cylinder. After down-selection, the final design included a servo pneumatic positioning system, a linear Hall effect magnetoresistive sensor, an analog circuit with operational amplifiers, an Arduino, and a laptop. The visual components of the final design interfaced with the laptop, with a MATLAB script initiating the display of a preset video in time with the commanded pitch dataset.

Team (Left to Right): Andres Zambrano, Emma Lee, Anthony Nardone, Christopher Mok, Nicholas McKnight