Optical Sensors for Real-Time Measurement of Motorcycle Tilt Angle

This paper addresses the analysis and design of an optical sensor for the real-time measurement of the tilt angle in hypersport motorcycles. The aim of this paper is to design a compact, reliable, and low-cost optical triangulator that is capable of accurate in-field measurements in the harsh environment of sport motorcycles. An analytical computation of the required system sensitivity and achievable accuracy is carried out. The detrimental effects of solar interference are also described and discussed. The proposed instrumentation, which is realized with ad hoc laser emitters, is shown to have superior performance with respect to a previous solution based on light-emitting diode (LED) emitters. Such novel triangulators are shown to provide good and reliable performances for the proposed application to maintain low costs and small sizes, overcoming the problem of solar interference. The performance of the proposed sensor is assessed by experiments on an instrumented motorbike in a racetrack.