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Windcheetah steering on a bike

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fd3:
One of the things I found really odd about riding with hamster bars was swinging the tiller about to steer.  The Windcheetah steering concept seems more intuitive to me.  I saw this on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2etDedPYRI
Which seemed to me should work for a recumbent bike
I am surprised that this hasn't been tried on bikes before.  Is it a question or weight, complexity, cost or patent?

Kim:

--- Quote from: fd3 on 20 May, 2019, 10:40:26 am ---One of the things I found really odd about riding with hamster bars was swinging the tiller about to steer.  The Windcheetah steering concept seems more intuitive to me.

--- End quote ---

 :o

It takes all sorts, I suppose.

(FWIW on any bike I don't think about what the bars are doing, I think about what the wheel attached to them is doing.  In as much as I think about it at all, which is only something you need to do while you program your muscle-memory to ride the bike.)



--- Quote ---I saw this on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2etDedPYRI
Which seemed to me should work for a recumbent bike
I am surprised that this hasn't been tried on bikes before.  Is it a question or weight, complexity, cost or patent?

--- End quote ---

Good question.  Other than being unintuitive ;) I don't see why it shouldn't work.

I've seen upright bicycles with a steering wheel before, although normally it's just operating as a handlebar in the usual way.  The one in this first photo would appear to be functionally similar (rotating in a vertical-ish plane to steer), without the free movement at the universal joint:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/802751/bicycle-collection-steering-wheel-sale-vintage-bikes-penny-farthing

Wobbly John:
I've seen bikes that had joysticks before, but they were push = left , pull = right type, and I believe handling was not good. I think a Windcheetah joystick would make balance difficult and not offer enough leverage.

In my opinion, handlebars cotribute more to balance and steering dampening than we imagine - I can ride a bike with handlebars no-hands, but not a bike without handlebars...

...What do you mean, you've never tried that?!

LMT:

--- Quote from: Wobbly John on 25 May, 2019, 06:40:34 pm ---I've seen bikes that had joysticks before, but they were push = left , pull = right type, and I believe handling was not good. I think a Windcheetah joystick would make balance difficult and not offer enough leverage.

In my opinion, handlebars cotribute more to balance and steering dampening than we imagine - I can ride a bike with handlebars no-hands, but not a bike without handlebars...

...What do you mean, you've never tried that?!

--- End quote ---

I'd go with the above, the dynamics of a trike are different to a bike for obvious reasons. A joystick is a solution for a problem that does not exist on a two wheeled bent.

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