New bike technology

[reohn2]

Here's a bike that does the riding for you:- https://youtu.be/my7CXcYw-ss

[horizon]

It's interesting that it does 1000 calculations per second for balance. So that's what we do too. One of the reasons I'm interested in cycling into old age is to keep alive a sense of balance and confidence - that's something that older people can lose. I've just been cycling very, very slowly through our local narrow busy pedestrianised high street full of holiday makers, children, pushchairs, dogs etc while trying to keep both feet on the pedals. It was good - I wonder if we should lose that if the bike did it for us?

[kwackers]

It's interesting that it does 1000 calculations per second for balance. So that's what we do too. One of the reasons I'm interested in cycling into old age is to keep alive a sense of balance and confidence - that's something that older people can lose. I've just been cycling very, very slowly through our local narrow busy pedestrianised high street full of holiday makers, children, pushchairs, dogs etc while trying to keep both feet on the pedals. It was good - I wonder if we should lose that if the bike did it for us?

We're analogue, so in theory we're doing more. 1000 calculations per second in the digital domain is probably the minimum (plus a safety margin) needed to stop the maths exploding.

No reason we wouldn't lose it, I have a pedelec and I know that using it means I'll be less fit, even if I peddle hard it still reduces the overall effort. If there's no need to balance then you'd expect your balance would become poorer.

However:
What happens to it if someone with no sense of balance tries to ride it? Having ridden a motorcycle with a pillion who didn't have any I can't say I found it neither easy or safe.
I reckon if someone with no sense of balance tried to ride it they'd fall off.

[Mike Sales]

Possibly more interesting is what happens to it if someone with no sense of balance tries to ride it? Having ridden a motorcycle with a pillion who didn't have any I can't say I found it neither easy or safe.
I reckon if someone with no sense of balance tried to ride it they'd fall off.

I found things went better if I instructed my pillion to lean with me, and not try to do any balancing themselves.
With a rather heavier stoker we hit the deck when I tried to make a low speed turn but he did not agree that we had space to do it before the oncoming car.

[Bonefishblues]

It's interesting that it does 1000 calculations per second for balance. So that's what we do too. One of the reasons I'm interested in cycling into old age is to keep alive a sense of balance and confidence - that's something that older people can lose. I've just been cycling very, very slowly through our local narrow busy pedestrianised high street full of holiday makers, children, pushchairs, dogs etc while trying to keep both feet on the pedals. It was good - I wonder if we should lose that if the bike did it for us?

We're analogue, so in theory we're doing more. 1000 calculations per second in the digital domain is probably the minimum (plus a safety margin) needed to stop the maths exploding.

No reason we wouldn't lose it, I have a pedelec and I know that using it means I'll be less fit, even if I peddle hard it still reduces the overall effort. If there's no need to balance then you'd expect your balance would become poorer.

However:
What happens to it if someone with no sense of balance tries to ride it? Having ridden a motorcycle with a pillion who didn't have any I can't say I found it neither easy or safe.
I reckon if someone with no sense of balance tried to ride it they'd fall off.

Serious Q, because I don't know - are we analogue beings? I thought we were, at heart, just a bunch of very very fast on/off impulses?

[kwackers]

Serious Q, because I don't know - are we analogue beings? I thought we were, at heart, just a bunch of very very fast on/off impulses?

We are indeed.
Neurons have weighted inputs, in simple terms they measure and sum the levels on all their inputs and then output a level based on what they're seeing.
To complicate things synapses are also analogue, continual firing causes them to reduce the levels they output - part of the reason you become 'numb' to repeated stimuli.

We wouldn't make very good digital machines because the flow of information across our brain is only around 200mph so we can't 'clock' ourselves at anything like the rate computers manage.
Being analogue is one of the reasons it's very difficult to come up with good models of what our brain does. Simulating analogue functions on a digital computer is incredibly difficult - one of the reasons it's only now we're starting to get the power to run decent neural networks giving us the power to detect all the cats in a photograph.

This is a very simplistic answer btw.
Turns out there are lots of neuron types with different functions and even the connections between them is anything but simple.

[fausto copy]

It'd be quite fun jogging through town with one of those following you and I bet the motorists would steer well clear.

[kwackers]

It'd be quite fun jogging through town with one of those following you and I bet the motorists would steer well clear.

I envisaged a whole line of them following behind me.

You could even train them to ride alongside - motorists love that.
The irony of an empty bike travelling alongside a cyclist would probably be lost on most though...