Development of a Steering and Braking System for Automated Cargo-Bikes

Abstract

To relieve busy urban areas of automobile traffic and exhaust emissions, bike sharing systems are increasingly being implemented. In order to expand the limited transport capacity of a bicycle, cargo bikes are used for private transport in the narrow urban area. The problem is often the availability of a cargo bike at a determined time. The limited number and possibly inhomogeneous distribution in the urban area reduces availability of the cargo bikes. To increase the acceptance of the system, the goal must therefore be to significantly increase the availability at all locations in the urban area. So far, the consumer had to get to the means of transport, now the cargo bike should autonomously navigate to the user and maneuver. This article focuses on the actuators and their modeling as an elementary part of the overall system to enable the automated journey of a cargo bike. There are currently no off-the-shelf components available for braking and steering. The steering and braking system must be able to be controlled separately from each other by humans or automatically, in order to allow manual and automatic operation. For brake and steering a suitable concept is developed, a simulation model is built and evaluated. In addition, the steering mechanism is evaluated with measured values on the real test vehicle.