The art and science of cycling and their implications for road safety
Riding a bicycle is an acquired skill. At rest the system is highly unstable yet, given some forward speed, it is easy to stabilize. Over the past 150 years scores of people have been attracted to this subject, either for a dissertation, a hobby or sometimes as part of a life’s work. Unfortunately, few results agree and there is little generality on the basic features that make a bicycle stable and why some bicycles are easier to control than others. This talk will focus on the dynamics and control of the bicycle and the implications for vehicle handling and safety.
About the speaker

Arend L. Schwab is Professor Emeritus at Delft University of Technology. His expertise covers multi-body dynamics, biomechanics, bicycle dynamics and control, sports engineering, speed skating, robotics and legged locomotion.
Arend’s interest in bicycle dynamics was first ignited by Andy Ruina during the sabbatical (2002/2003) at Cornell University, USA. This interest led to creation of the TU Delft bicycle lab which Arend founded in mid-2000s and ran until his retirement in 2021.
Despite the complexity of the subject studied, Arend prefers to work with simple models.