Self-driving cars, get ready to share the road with self-riding bikes.

What’s new: Beijing-based machine learning researcher Zhihui Peng built a riderless bike that stays upright, navigates, and avoids collisions, Synced Review reported. You can watch Peng’s video presentation here.

How he did it: Zhihui calls his design eXtremely Unnatural Auto-Navigation (Xuan).

The bike’s sensors include a depth-sensing camera, lidar, and accelerometer. Battery-powered motors keep it rolling, turn the handlebars, and spin a gyroscope that maintains its balance.
Obstacle avoidance, path planning, and object following models run on a Huawei Ascend 310 processor mounted behind the seat. Zhihui developed them using Huawei’s Ascend software stack and used Robotic Operating System to control communications between the bike’s subsystems.
The bike steered itself through several tests. It remained balanced even when it hit another object and when Zhihui put a bag on its handlebars.

Behind the news: Zhihui was inspired by a 2016 April Fool’s Day prank played by Google. In a video that announced “Google’s Self-Driving Bike,” the company made it appear as though a two-wheeler had driven itself through the streets of Amsterdam.

Why it matters: Self-driving bikes aren’t necessarily a joke. A self-driving motorcycle helped to attract attention to the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge, which kick-started the current self-driving movement. Zhihui’s contraption is a DIY project, but it may prefigure summonable e-bikes, autonomous food deliveries, or steering control for long-distance cyclists who need a break from the handlebars.

We’re thinking: We look forward to the self-pedaling unicycle.

Ascend

A Bicycle Built for Zero

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