New bike technology
New bike technology
Here's a bike that does the riding for you:- https://youtu.be/my7CXcYw-ss
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Re: New bike technology
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?
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
Re: New bike technology
horizon wrote: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.
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Re: New bike technology
kwackers wrote: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.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
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Re: New bike technology
kwackers wrote:horizon wrote: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?
Re: New bike technology
Bonefishblues wrote: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.
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Re: New bike technology
It'd be quite fun jogging through town with one of those following you and I bet the motorists would steer well clear.
Re: New bike technology
fausto copy wrote: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...