Cornell bicycle research began in 1985 when
Jim Papadopoulos came to Cornell to work with Andy Ruina, or
vice versa. Undergraduate projects have included the application
of constraints to pedals, making a geared unicycle, designing a
new suspension, measuring the efficiency of a bicycle
transmission, designing a constrained pedal, tests of stability,
automatic wheel truing, tests of what people can perceive,
measurement of the effect of inertia on pedaling efficiency,
etc.. Bike research had a lull from about 1988-2002. Starting in
2002-03, with the visit of Arend
Schwab from Delft, collaborating with graduate student
Andrew Dressel, the stability research has progressed.
The clearly-observable asymptotic stability (quickly decaying
oscillations) of a bicycle is shown. This is a random bicycle.
The aymptotic stability of this bicycle is predicted by the
equations of motion of an ideal conservative bicycle (with disk
wheels and point contact). Older
video of bicycle stability (download).
JBike6:
A program for calculating stability eigenvalues.