Honda Developing Semi-Self-Balancing Gold Wing?

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Will the next Gold Wing have electronic balance assistance? Possibly, but not when being ridden. (drew ruiz/)

Remember the Honda Riding Assist and Riding Assist-E concept bikes that made something of a stir on the internet six years ago thanks to videos showing them balancing themselves and even following someone around like an obedient dog? A version of that technology appears to be heading for the next-generation Honda Gold Wing with the intention of making the bike easier to push around.

There’s nothing more embarrassing or infuriating than dropping a bike while maneuvering it around your garage, or worse in a parking lot in front of others, but it’s something that happens to the best of us. While it takes little effort to keep a bike upright and push it around from one side, once it starts to tip beyond a certain point its weight seems to multiply, and even if you know what you’re doing it’s possible to get it wrong once in a while. With a heavy tourer like the Honda Gold Wing, the problem can be exacerbated. That’s where Honda’s latest design idea comes into play.

Related: Top Tips For Handling Heavy Touring Motorcycles - RIDE SMART

The firm has filed a patent application for a system that doesn’t aim to be quite as advanced as the entirely self-balancing Riding Assist concepts but uses the same technology to take the risk and effort out of pushing a bike. The Riding Assist bikes, which have since evolved into Honda’s most recent ESV (Experimental Safety Vehicle) based on an NM4 Vultus, balance using the same technique as trials riders when balancing on obstacles, moving the steering left and right to fractionally shift the bike and keep the center of gravity directly above the contact patch with the ground.

Honda’s patent is aimed at helping maintain balance while pushing a bike from the side. (Honda/)

 

While Honda has proved it can use this system to make a bike completely self-balancing, the patent document shows a more modest version of the idea that aims only to make sure that the weight that the rider is supporting while pushing it doesn’t become too much to hold up. The main component is a steering actuator that’s already been the subject of several patents relating to the next-generation Gold Wing and other models. Honda has plans to use this servo system for a variety of rider assistance systems, including lane-assist and obstacle avoidance. The idea in the latest patent is less ambitious than some of those goals but much more achievable in the short term.

With a rider standing on the left of the bike, as you would normally when pushing it around, the system aims to keep it tilted slightly toward them while preventing it from getting out of control. The steering actuator, identical to the one seen in other Honda patents, is connected to a computer that takes signals from an on-board tilt sensor. If the bike begins to lean too much toward the pusher, it will steer closer to them, making itself more upright to reduce the weight they’re having to hold up. If it gets completely vertical, where there’s a risk that the bike could fall away from the pusher, the steering turns the other way to stop that from happening.

A steering actuator is used to lean the bike slightly into the rider while pushing it. If it leans too much the actuator steers the bike closer to the rider to stand it up more. (Honda /)

The DCT version of the Gold Wing already has a “walking speed mode,” using the “shift up” and “shift down” switches on the bars to trundle forward or backward at low speed under its own power while maneuvering, so the addition of a steering assist in the same mode that stops the bike from tilting too far makes a lot of sense. The existing sensors and computers used for traction control and ABS systems can already monitor the bike’s lean angle, so simply adding the steering servo to the system to help prevent low-speed toppling would be easy to adopt.

The steering actuator is located at or near the steering head. (Honda/)

 

Given the large number of patents Honda has filed relating to a next-generation Gold Wing, ranging from radar systems to navigation that routes you around bad weather, it’s clear the bike is at the center of a large R&D project at the moment. How soon will we see the results? That’s not clear yet, but since rival brands are starting to take the lead in terms of rider-assist technology, with several bikes already offering radar-assisted adaptive cruise control that is not yet available on any Hondas, the firm will want to reestablish itself as a tech pioneer sooner rather than later and the Gold Wing is the ideal platform to debut such developments.

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