Power assist control of electric bicycle taking environment and rider's condition into account

Recently, bicycles are widely used as a convenient transportation tool. But from a viewpoint of wide use for the future aging society, it is problem to pedal on rider's own. As well known, power assistance bicycle has already been used. The power assistance bicycle helps the elderly people or the people who has weak legs to expand their field. However, existing power assistance bicycle doesn't take running environment and rider's condition into account. The new control algorithm for power assistance bicycle is proposed in this paper. Human input and running friction are estimated as a disturbance torque with a disturbance observer. By using high pass filter (HPF), human input is separated from running friction. This method realizes power assistance bicycle without torque sensor. Disturbance observer compensates running friction. Compliance control is applied to make the bicycle have desired compliance. The effectiveness of this control algorithm is verified by numerical and experimental results.