Real-time simulation experiments of a three wheeled vehicle and motorcycle

Abstract

As a new means of transportation for short and middle distance, personal mobility vehicle (PMV), which is one or two-seater and has high environmental performance, is recently being developed. It is because many people drive a car when they travel a short distance alone, that is inefficient in cost and space. One of the PMVs which is recently gathering attention is three-wheeled vehicle with leaning mechanism. Leaning mechanism, which gives tires degree of freedom, has an effect of stable cornering in the case of short tread width vehicle. For this reason, this vehicle has two advantages, compact and stability. We research on the vehicle which has two front wheels and one rear wheel. We derived equation of motion by referring to Sharp’s 4 DOF two-wheeled vehicle model, and carried out the numerical analysis to compare three-wheeled vehicle and two wheeled vehicle. However, it’s difficult to find out driver’s sensuous difference between three-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicle by only numerical analysis. Then, we conducted the real-time simulation experiments and questionnaires, search on that difference. Through that experiments, three-wheeled vehicle needs large steering torque and drivers feel sense of security, but steering is difficult when the vehicle speed is fast. On the other hand, two wheeled vehicle needs small steering torque and large output, so drivers steer constantly for maintenance of slalom running.