Manufacturers: Take Note! Next-gen EUC Concepts.

[MikeV]

I'm hoping that these will stay in the public domain. These are my thoughts and there is nothing proprietary about them (they may have already been discussed ad nauseam). They are only an application of existing technologies fitted to a generic EUC. 

Anti-Oscillation

A common occurrence with new riders and possibly an unexpected occurrence with experienced riders; This is caused by an external force, applied along the Z-axis of the wheel, which can be either large or small and results in enough amplitude to disrupt straight-line travel. The frequency of the oscillation will be static and due to rider experience and/or time-to-respond will either grow in amplitude or dissipate. Small amplitudes are an annoyance. Large amplitudes are a safety concern.

The solution is a built-in counter-weight system, akin to a vibrating module in a phone/beeper. The system will apply itself axially along the X or Y-axis. The mass will be static but the frequency will be variable. An accelerometer will monitor Z-axis oscillation and, when observed, will calculate the rate at which the amplitude is increasing. When the amplitude reaches the range at which the counter-weight system would be effective, the counter-weight system will move out-of-phase with the oscillations. The effect should be almost instantaneous. It will generate additional stress to the EUC frame. But caught early enough, it should safer than the alternative. The system can also be rolled out in multiple stages, with different masses coming into play, if necessary.

This would be a boon to general riding as well as racing applications.

Traction Control

Similar to the way Traction Control in cars behaves, the EUC electronics would monitor wheel speed and motor load and, when an irregularity is observed, reduce motor power until load/traction is re-established. The trick, here, is that the EUC will have to compromise between reduced power and what is assumed to be a rider leaning over. Too much reduced power for too long of time will be a safety concern. Likely also will be the requirement for the EUC to 'catch up' to the rider's position. Again, at tricky balance. But given the alternative (an EUC losing traction alltogether), it would be a step in the right direction.

 

Best,

Michael

[mrelwood]

I disagree on the tracktion control. Small puddle of mud or especially soft sand would make the feature ineffective and harmful.

I haven’t heard of an EUC incident where a traction control would have helped. What makes you feel it would be worth investing on?

The anti-vibration system could be very effective though. I started thinking wether a static wobble could even be tamed with a front-to back oscillation, small enough not to push the rider to jump ship. For example switching between accelerating (tilt-back) and braking every 1.5 wobble oscillations, or whatever would work the best.

I do wonder though if it could be my bigfoot pedal extensions that have saved me from any notable wobbles for the last 12000km.

[Flying W]

I went to the drug store to get meds while in the middle of the flu. I was getting oscillations at any speed above 15mph. I think just feeling like garbage was making me tense up. I'm back healthy again and the oscillations are gone. 

I would love to see some kind of shock absorption on next gen EUCs just to help my bad knee. I dont have any ideas that wouldn't effect pedal feel, or just simply add too much cost though. 

Some way of getting rid of the oscillations would be great as well. My dad gets them no matter what still but he had less than 10miles under his belt. 

[Keith]

2 hours ago, MikeV said:

Traction Control

 Similar to the way Traction Control in cars behaves, the EUC electronics would monitor wheel speed and motor load and, when an irregularity is observed, reduce motor power until load/traction is re-established. The trick, here, is that the EUC will have to compromise between reduced power and what is assumed to be a rider leaning over. Too much reduced power for too long of time will be a safety concern. Likely also will be the requirement for the EUC to 'catch up' to the rider's position. Again, at tricky balance. But given the alternative (an EUC losing traction alltogether), it would be a step in the right direction

You haven’t thought out properly how an EUC balances and works. This just is not possible without faceplanting the rider.

To reiterate what has been said before: the primary function of an EUC is to balance and that is ALL the electronics are trying to do. That this causes you, if you lean forward, to accelerate is a happy byproduct of that function. Anything you do to “reduce power”, brake, or anything else, like restrict maximum speed, control traction, etc, etc, is fundamentally going to bugger up balancing.

Not to mention that they still haven’t been able to completely eliminate such oscillations due to poor skills by the operator in much, much more mature technologies such as motorbikes and planes

 

[meepmeepmayer]

• Anti-oscillation: A mass dampener or mass balancer is complicated and therefore expensive, adds weight and volume, and is unneeded. Wobbles come from muscle tension, and the best solution for that is much better wheel ergonomy. Right now we have shitty flat hard pedals and some random plastic shell. No wobbles if you're more comfortable on the wheel.
• Traction control: Very tricky to implement, as it directly contradicts the working principle of self-balancing vehicles. If it can be done, not sure if it's worth the effort. One could just use better tires

Things I'd like to see:

• Warning vibrations/buzzer: In addition to tiltback and beeps, add a good strong vibration motor (like in your phone) that can send buzz signals. Can't be overheard unlike beeps, and it won't confuse/annoy/attract attention from others. It could theoretically replace or augment beeps, but I'd like all 3 types of safety warnings available independently.
• Better pedals: With suspension, more ergonomic pedals supporting the foot arch, bigger!
• 3D EUCs/acceleration-relative EUCs/much better acceleration sensor: 
  Right now, all the sensor measures is the wheel's tilt. So it only looks which direction gravity points. A (much) better acceleration sensor could not only measure that, but also the direction of your momentum force (not sure how to call it - the direction your body is pushed in dynamic movement).
  This would allow things that are impossible now with tilt-only EUCs, for example:
  * Riding through loopings like on a rollercoaster!
  * Big, long jumps without the wheel switching off or accelerating like crazy in the tilt direction while you're in the air!
  * Riding into steep curves without the wheel switching off because it's too much tilted to the side! (It would switch off in the same position if the wheel were still, because then there's no acceleration pressing the rider against the curve.) You could even ride into a wall of death.
  * More comfortable on hills instead of always dead-level pedals!
  Basically, a EUC that accelerates and decelerates not (only) according to your tilt against gravity, but to your tilt against your own momentum.
  This would need "professional" acceleration sensors, not the smartphone crap we have now, but otherwise it shouldn't be too complicated to implement.
• Hand and body gestures. A better and more sensitive acceleration sensor could detect certain things you do with your body. Slap one hand against your thigh twice, lights get switched on or off. Two slaps on opposite sides: ring the bell. Etc. No need to press buttons or use your phone to control the wheel. Wheels can feel like an extension to your body, but with a sensitive sensor, your body can also become an extension of the wheel. The wheel could even read your heartbeat and do something with that.
• EUCs that flip open like a book (hinge on top) for easy access to the tire. For a tire change or just cleaning. Just needs a good locking mechanism.
• Toolless tire change (this requires the flipping thing to work nicely): Motor rims should have outer tire frames that can be taken out and replaced without tools. This would allow quick tire changes (flip wheel open, remove the rim frame with the tire, slot another one in, flip closed, done!) and would allow having different tires pre-installed on their respective frames (not even an air pump needed while riding) that you can take with you while riding.
  Imagine that: You ride, get to a frozen river (let's say you are in Moscow), quickly flip open your wheel and slot in a spiked ice tire on its frame from your backpack, put your original road tire on its frame into the backpack, and continue riding on the ice! No tools, no pump, 30 second tire change.
• Watertight EUCs. They should work under water (for a limited time). No more worrying about wheels falling into water, no more worrying about any kind of rain, river fording possible, riding in the sea possible, you name it. Also makes them safe against road salt, saltwater, detergents, etc. Makes them easy to clean, just rinse them off with a hose or take a bath with your wheel.
• I still want much better, brighter front and back lights. Must be fully suitable to riding at night in heavy rain on a busy road. That kind of intensity. And of course adjustable, from night-ride mega-low intensity to maximum visibility mode.

Edited October 6, 2018 by meepmeepmayer

[Flying W]

Plus 1 to everything meepmeepmayer said haha, especially water proofing, vibration alerts, and hinged housings. All 3 of those shouldn't be too difficult to do. 

[MikeV]

3 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I disagree on the tracktion control. Small puddle of mud or especially soft sand would make the feature ineffective and harmful.

I haven’t heard of an EUC incident where a traction control would have helped. What makes you feel it would be worth investing on?

The anti-vibration system could be very effective though. I started thinking wether a static wobble could even be tamed with a front-to back oscillation, small enough not to push the rider to jump ship. For example switching between accelerating (tilt-back) and braking every 1.5 wobble oscillations, or whatever would work the best.

I do wonder though if it could be my bigfoot pedal extensions that have saved me from any notable wobbles for the last 12000km.

 

2 hours ago, Keith said:

You haven’t thought out properly how an EUC balances and works. This just is not possible without faceplanting the rider.

To reiterate what has been said before: the primary function of an EUC is to balance and that is ALL the electronics are trying to do. That this causes you, if you lean forward, to accelerate is a happy byproduct of that function. Anything you do to “reduce power”, brake, or anything else, like restrict maximum speed, control traction, etc, etc, is fundamentally going to bugger up balancing.

Not to mention that they still haven’t been able to completely eliminate such oscillations due to poor skills by the operator in much, much more mature technologies such as motorbikes and planes

 

Going to bunch these two together... "You haven’t thought out properly how an EUC balances and works."

"Likely also will be the requirement for the EUC to 'catch up' to the rider's position. Again, at tricky balance. But given the alternative (an EUC losing traction alltogether), it would be a step in the right direction."

The point of Traction Control is that you've already lost traction. In that scenario, like it or not, you will continue leaning forward (and eventually faceplanting), unless the wheel can regain traction. Yes, reducing power will also continue the lean. But your inertia remains the same (i.e. speed of gravity, minus minus minus). So the first goal with Traction Control is regaining positive contact w/ the road surface. Next, the wheel has to deal with the fact that you're likely leaning more forward than you were, when it first lost positive contact. Then the idea is that you 'hold on tight' while it tries to get back underneath you. Not a guarantee. But then again, neither is it for your car.

@mrelwoodWhat made me think of it was Chooch's wipeout on the Z10 coming out of a corner. He said his tire was overinflated and when he nailed it, on the exit, he lost it. I played that crash over and over. It's an oscillation along the Z-axis. Came out of nowhere. A person could never respond quickly enough. But it would be an eternity for electronics to observe and respond to.

@meepmeepmayer  The 3D accelerometer concept is cool. I can see some immediate pluses and minuses. Will take some time to get my head around... Agreed on the brighter lights. A 5-watt Cree XP-G(whatever) would be awesome. Two would be better. And neither would make a dent in the battery life. If only someone would make a custom insert w/ the requisite cooling

3 hours ago, Flying W said:

I went to the drug store to get meds while in the middle of the flu. I was getting oscillations at any speed above 15mph. I think just feeling like garbage was making me tense up. I'm back healthy again and the oscillations are gone. 

I would love to see some kind of shock absorption on next gen EUCs just to help my bad knee. I dont have any ideas that wouldn't effect pedal feel, or just simply add too much cost though. 

Some way of getting rid of the oscillations would be great as well. My dad gets them no matter what still but he had less than 10miles under his belt. 

Not too much cost. Someone may already be working on some CAD drawings that incorporate scooter shocks. Fortunately, prototyping machine shops are a dime a dozen in LA

[LanghamP]

Concerning traction control, I believe it can be implemented in all present EUCs with a software change, and that it would help in many but not all situations.

To confirm a lost of traction occurs, ride an EUC on dirt or gravel using great acceleration. You will see that as you lose traction by leaning forward, the wheel will continue spinning its wheel faster while continuing to tip, and so forth until the wheel has crashed.

You can even confirm this without danger to yourself or the wheel by placing the wheel on a slippery surface, then tipping the wheel; the further the wheel is tipped the faster the wheel spins and the less likely the wheel can regain traction.

By assuming any huge rate of change is a wheel spinning up or down due to little or no traction, we can then program the wheel to momentarily ignore those inputs. I would guess such a wheel would feel "soggy" when losing then regaining traction, and I would also guess such a wheel would dump you on surfaces where you had great traction, for example pavement transitioning to water or mud.

Bottom line; traction control should be easy to implement while also being useful on loose surfaces.

[MikeV]

1 hour ago, LanghamP said:

Concerning traction control, I believe it can be implemented in all present EUCs with a software change, and that it would help in many but not all situations.

To confirm a lost of traction occurs, ride an EUC on dirt or gravel using great acceleration. You will see that as you lose traction by leaning forward, the wheel will continue spinning its wheel faster while continuing to tip, and so forth until the wheel has crashed.

You can even confirm this without danger to yourself or the wheel by placing the wheel on a slippery surface, then tipping the wheel; the further the wheel is tipped the faster the wheel spins and the less likely the wheel can regain traction.

By assuming any huge rate of change is a wheel spinning up or down due to little or no traction, we can then program the wheel to momentarily ignore those inputs. I would guess such a wheel would feel "soggy" when losing then regaining traction, and I would also guess such a wheel would dump you on surfaces where you had great traction, for example pavement transitioning to water or mud.

Bottom line; traction control should be easy to implement while also being useful on loose surfaces.

Correct. It's all software. And you're also correct in how the electronics would 'know' that traction had been lost (motor speed dramatically increases, while load [amperage] dramatically decreases. 

[LanghamP]

4 hours ago, Keith said:

.Not to mention that they still haven’t been able to completely eliminate such oscillations due to poor skills by the operator in much, much more mature technologies such as motorbikes and planes

 

Knowing what causes speeds wobbles is half the battle. Keith Code goes into some detail on causes of speed wobbles. He reiterates not worrying about speed wobbles solves speed wobbles; motorcycle speed wobbles are your friend as they rebalance your bike.

In a lot of the above video notice the wobbles comes then almost instantly disappears. That is because the rider didn't fight the wobble.

I used to own a Suzuki sv650 that near my house I would lean back and pull a very low wheely and just skim my front tire over this section of rough pavement in a turn. It was just a very good feeling to go into this mild to moderate tankslapper, knowing I was perfectly safe because the tankslapper was my friend and not my enemy. Dropping a wobbling front-end back into the pavement and not fighting it feels exactly like your front wheel got caught in wet cement. Never had a problem for years.

Eventually I sold my SV and got a BMW K1200r. Not once could I get it to tankslap. Some time later I noticed it had an electronic steering damper under the front spring (automotive A arm instead of forks), and stopped wobbles before they started.

By accident I noticed even a rather light weight on the front or the rear of a wheel prone to wobble is effective at stopping those wobbles. I think the most effective ghetto solution is to strap the heaviest water resistant speaker in your arsenal to the front or even the top of your wheel. My guess is all manufacturers should simply go contrary to common sense and place all heavy components as far from the center of the wheel as possible, rather like tightrope walkers use the longest heaviest pole for better balance.

[Hsiang]

Any chance we can add shocks to the list as well? Not sure if it is possible given the inherent need for the wheel to sense foot pressure as part of the control. but some sort of air shock with variable dampening would be awesome.

[Mono]

On 10/6/2018 at 10:38 PM, mrelwood said:

I haven’t heard of an EUC incident where a traction control would have helped. What makes you feel it would be worth investing on?

I can remember a few situations I had where the wheel started spinning over the ground offroad. Traction control would likely have given me some desirable additional traction (and hence balancing power) in these situations. It is not a big issue and happens rarely (after all the motor power is rather limited) and I prefer no traction control over a badly implemented one. Hence traction control would be low on my priority list.

[DanCar]

I wonder if adjustable pedal height would be helpful.  For fast cruising you'd want a low height.  For slow speed where sharp turns are possible you want something higher so pedals don't scrape.  If you are off roading then you may want higher stance to avoid getting caught in tall grass or being slowed down by pedals in snow.

Could make it GPS activated where it knows where you slowed down in the past and starts to raise the pedals to avoid a scrape.

Height adjustment could be done with a motor attached to a screw drive.  Turning the screw adjusts the height of the pedals.

Edited October 8, 2018 by DanCar

[MikeV]

On 10/7/2018 at 6:37 PM, Hsiang said:

Any chance we can add shocks to the list as well? Not sure if it is possible given the inherent need for the wheel to sense foot pressure as part of the control. but some sort of air shock with variable dampening would be awesome.

Yep. Don't need a huge amount of travel. But something to take the edge off would be nice  

[Mono]

On 10/8/2018 at 3:37 AM, Hsiang said:

Any chance we can add shocks to the list as well? Not sure if it is possible given the inherent need for the wheel to sense foot pressure as part of the control. but some sort of air shock with variable dampening would be awesome.

Shock absorption is based on linear (more or less vertical) movements, while the wheel senses the inclination angle of the pedals which only changes from circular motions. The good news is that these don't directly interact with each other.

Two threads showing EUCs with suspension:

Ideally though, the shell with the main board and the battery would be part of the sprung mass and not of the unsprung mass as in the above prototypes.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Mono

[LanghamP]

On 10/7/2018 at 8:37 PM, Hsiang said:

Any chance we can add shocks to the list as well? Not sure if it is possible given the inherent need for the wheel to sense foot pressure as part of the control. but some sort of air shock with variable dampening would be awesome.

I think shocks will be addressed quite nicely as wheels follow the cyclocross model of low inflated tubeless tires ala Z10. I recently rode a tubeless cyclocross and it was incomparably better than any other tubed tire. I know we like to say pneumatic tires are a great form of suspension but skinny innertubes inflated from 50 to 170 psi are just awful compared to tubeless.

Looking beyond that, I see the footpads moving in tandem on 1 or 2 inches of travel; the rest of the wheel is separate. Simple, few moving parts, adjustable preload for different rider weights.

[gon2fast]

cut out protection is all that I need. additional (scale) battery pack to allow control for short amount time when primary battery hits critical level. I easily accomplished this fix with RC vehicles that lost steering control on depleted batteries. Sync with on-board lighting notification to aid in events when audible alert are not effective.