Honda patents Artificially Intelligent suspension

Honda’s plans to put a suspension system on a bike that actually knows and PREDICTS the type of surface need you’ll want in the next split second!

The design uses both passive (reactive) and adaptive suspension equipment that respond to the range and frequency of the terrain under and in front of the bike, and shift the damping accordingly.

Using an accelerometer mounted to the front wheel axle (this is small, barely bigger than an ABS sensor), measurements are taken on a vertical axis, thousands of times a second.

Using this information, Honda’s engineers have come up with a system that can predict the train based on a combination of the front wheel oscillations and their amplitude between two preset ranges.

This graph shows what the set up is looking like and looking for. By measuring a deceleration between two points and the time it takes to move from the highest threshold (A) to the lowest (B), the bike knows whether it’s riding on a flatter, smoother surface (this is the shorter AB time) or whether it’s on a rougher terrain (the longer AB time). This information and values, in combination with active suspension on the bike, mean that the bike intelligently alters the motorcycle automatically, in real time for what it thinks is coming in the next split second.

The patents have been filed using a Honda CRF450L in the illustration, and whilst this is a motorcycle where (because it's off-road a lot of the time) an intelligent, predictive suspension system would make sense, there’s no reason why such a system wouldn’t also find its way on to more roadbased motorcycles, too.