The right way to ride the wrong bike: An exploration of Klein's 'unridable' bicycle.

ABSTRACT: Professor Richard Klein and his students built a bicycle with a rather interesting feature: no one was able to ride it. A prize was offered. Hundreds of students and cycling enthusiasts attempted it. Years passed, and the prize money grew. Klein's rear-steered bicycle became a canonical example of how non-minimum phase systems can be difficult and sometimes nearly impossible to control. It has been lauded as a particularly effective educational example in which students can experience the loss of controllability in a seemingly simple, albeit unorthodox bicycle. The primary result of the work reported here is a demonstration that it is possible for a human of modest athletic ability to ride Klein's unridable bicycle, to keep it balanced, and to control its direction of travel. There is a se

SUBMITTER: Coller BD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11695032 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature