Development of Racing Bicycle Position Control Device and Pedaling Exercise Analysis Software with Web-Based Data Management Function for Improving Cycling Technique

Abstract

To maximize the competitive ability of cyclist, many researches have been studied how to fit the setting of bicycle components against cyclist’s physical properties. At present, neither definitive policy nor effective method to set bicycle components appropriate for each cyclist have been established, so this study aims to develop a system that can assist to search an efficient setting of bicycle components for cyclist’s physical properties. The first feature of this system is to change the bicycle setting during pedaling exercise, and the second is to make the exercise data obtained by experiments sharable with researchers in the study field of cycling. The proposed system is developed by improving our previous experimental device and newly constructing an analysis software program with web-based data management function. The experimental device can automatically control the positions of both a saddle and a handle during pedaling exercise and measure multi-channel surface electromyography (SEMG) simultaneously. The analysis software program is constructed with Microsoft SQL Server to efficiently manage the huge volume of SEMG data, and additionally, web server technologies, Apache and PHP, are employed in order to be available through the Internet, so researchers can easily use all experimental data even if they live in different locations. The details of our experimental system are shown in this paper, and the summary of our findings through the experiments is also described.