Faculty of Technology
Students build a police-proof bike for lecturer
Wed, Jun 1, 2011
Dr Ivan Popov, a mechanical engineering lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, bought an electric bicycle to ride to work from his Southsea home two and a half miles away. But when he was stopped for the fifth time by police asking him why he wasn’t wearing a helmet, why he had no licence plates and why he was riding on a footpath he turned to his students for help.
They redesigned the bicycle completely, making it lighter, faster and – crucially – making it look like a bicycle.
Dr Popov said: “The students have done an utterly fantastic job. What they have come up with is so superior to the original.
“I bought the bike a year ago but I have experienced many problems. It has limited range, battery life and acceleration and the police kept stopping me when I rode it to work even though electric bicycles do not require you to comply with the same rules as a motorcyclist.
“Twice I ran out of power and ended up pushing the bike home – and pushing 40 kilos is not quite like pushing a bicycle. Pedalling was very difficult without gears and the pedals are in an awkward position.
“I decided to give the bike to my MEng students to see if they could overcome some of the problems while ensuring the bike was fully road legal and didn’t require helmets or insurance. What they have come up with is really fantastic.
“Their prototype is half the weight, has three times the range, better suspension and braking, very smart electronics, shorter stopping distance, better pedals, better safety – better everything.
“The MEng course is new and we are really seeing the benefits of it – these students are the crème de la crème.”
Chris Kirby, head of education at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: “This just shows that great British ingenuity is still alive and well in our universities. Over the next few decades we will be relying on engineers to solve global problems from climate change to overpopulation and, for these promising students, the problem of Dr Popov’s bicycle is an excellent start.”
Dr Popov intends keeping the original bicycle in the labs at work to give next year’s final-year students the same challenge but in the meantime he will use the new prototype bike to ride to work safe in the knowledge he won’t be stopped by police.
Three of the students who came up with the prototype are flatmates and final-year MEng students Justin Nicholls, Kevin Eades and Chris Sargent. They spent months working in their kitchen to plan, test and build a sophisticated prototype electric bicycle before moving it to the university engineering laboratories for final build and full testing.
Chris said: “We did get some funny looks when we held up traffic while we were testing it but it’s been worthwhile.
“We did a lot of research on electric bikes first and couldn’t find one anywhere that has everything this one has and definitely not at about £800-£900, which is what it could be manufactured for. It is a much better product than the original and we were inspired by the idea of making a prototype that could be affordable and have a real impact on the environment.
“One of our key aims was to try and build something that would encourage people to use an electrically assisted bicycle instead of a car for short journeys.”
The trio incorporated a range of improvements including making the bicycle capable of being easily programmed using a USB cable to help the rider a little or a lot, depending on the rider’s ability or choice; building a lightweight aluminium alloy frame to replace the original steel frame; locally sourcing standard parts to ensure they would be easy to replace if necessary; incorporating gears and a generator so the bike’s battery charges when the rider cycles or brakes; giving it cruise control; replacing the drum brakes with disc brakes to reduce stopping distance; and changing the 13kg lead acid battery to a 5.6kg lithium battery, all of which help extend the range of the bicycle from 14km to 40km.
Electronic and Computer Engineering students then joined in and built a range of improvements including indicators, automatic lights, dashboard displaying speed and battery life, improved ergonomics and comfort at a reasonable production cost.
It is the first time students from Mechanical and Design Engineering and Electronic and Computer Engineering have worked alongside each other, though both are studying on the MEng course, albeit a year apart. They were given £2,000 funding for the project by head of both departments Dr Misha Filip because it fulfilled the criteria for a final major project and gave students a rare opportunity to work across departments.
Dr Filip said: “This was an excellent project that enabled students from different disciplines to work together. Between them they have engineered an electric bicycle that has outstripped the original in every respect including a near three-fold improvement in range, more than doubled its running time, and a reduction of 60 per cent in cost per mile.”
Links to other MEng courses at Portsmouth
http://www.port.ac.uk/courses/coursetypes/undergraduate/MEngCommunicationSystems/
http://www.port.ac.uk/courses/coursetypes/undergraduate/MEngComputerEngineering/
http://www.port.ac.uk/courses/coursetypes/undergraduate/MEngElectronicEngineering/