Autonomy and user experience enhancement control of an electrically assisted bicycle with dual-wheel drive

This paper presents a control strategy study of a dual-wheel drive electric bicycle by taking the human-bicycle coupling into consideration. Containing two electric motors (one on the hub of each wheel), the bicycle is controlled by a fuzzy controller which ensure a sharing of the total power between the front and rear motors. The goal of this paper is to develop a control method for an electric bicycle with regenerative braking and dual-wheel drive. The proposed method can achieve a better user experience (response time and speed control) than the one currently proposed to the market. The two motors are controlled by two separate torque references and the control algorithm is carefully designed in order to consider the coupling between human reaction time and motor driving response time. In addition, both wheels are equipped with kinetic energy recovering breaks allowing an increased autonomy. The developed controller has also the ability to adapt different road conditions, in the objective of user experience improvement and power saving.