Riderless motorcycle keeps autonomous vehicle development on track

A self-driving motorcycle will allow autonomous cars to be tested under more challenging and representative conditions.

Motorcycles present a particular challenge to an autonomous vehicle or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) due to their speed and manoeuvrability.

To avoid risk to a human rider, initial development of the interactions between motorcycles and autonomous or ADAS-equipped vehicles has been carried out using controlled soft targets, but these are limited by their lack of speed and how accurately they represent real motorbikes.

Co-developed by Wiltshire-based AB Dynamics, the riderless motorcycle is said to have the full performance potential of the original bike, enabling more dynamic interactions to be tested, such as motorcycle overtaking, traffic filtering and lane splitting.

“A riderless motorcycle allows more comprehensive testing of autonomous or ADAS-equipped vehicles, without risking injury to a real rider,” explained Dr Richard Simpson, Senior Systems Engineer, AB Dynamics. “It also permits greater accuracy, repeatability and consistency between tests than any human rider could achieve.”