Elaboration and quantitative assessment of manoeuvrability for motorcycle lane change

The desire to quantitatively assess vehicle manoeuvrability and handling has led to the development of various expressions, or metrics, which typically relate system input to system output. With regard to motorcycle manoeuvrability, a notable example of such a measure, or metric, is the Koch index Koch, J., 1978, Experimentelle und Analytische Untersuchungen des Motorraad-Fahrer Systems. Dissertation, Berlin.]. This article describes the development of a new metric applied to lane change (LC) tests and coined 'LC roll index'. This metric takes into account the peak-to-peak values of the rider-input steering torque divided by the peak-to-peak roll rate response of the vehicle and normalizes this quantity by the forward velocity. In addition to this new metric, an analytical expression is developed, which in many cases summarizes a motorcycle's LC performance in a single, terse, analytical term. Experimental results are presented for three vastly different motorcycles: a scooter, a street, and a touring motorcycle performing variations of the LC manoeuvre. Numerous test runs for each vehicle are analysed and the results are summarized along with those presented in the recent literature. Finally, simulation results are presented to highlight the correlation between the proposed indices and handling.