Rock Launch

ROCK LAUNCH

Bosch shows electronic rider aids of the present and future. One of those is onboard rockets to save you from a slide.

STEVE ANDERSON

Being handed a pair of earplugs by Bosch PR people at a demonstration of what’s new in electronic rider aids was unexpected. But not nearly as unexpected as the rocket blast that came from the side of a motorcycle using the company’s prototype Slip Mitigation system, which is allegedly superior to Marc Marquez’s elbows in saving seemingly hopeless front-wheel slides.

Bosch invited me to Renningen, Germany (just outside German motor city Stuttgart), to see not only this noisy new technology, but also quite a bit of new stuff that will be seen on motorcycles likely to be announced as soon as this fall.

Bosch explained that we’d be riding motorcycles with fully prototype systems, and that such machines were in too-short supply to extend wider invitations than the 12 journalists invited worldwide. The point of the trip was to showcase what Bosch was doing to improve safety and convenience on motorcycles via electronics, and— frankly—to convince you that you need these systems. In this, Bosch’s interests are slightly different than those of most motorcycle companies.

Robert Bosch is a mammoth, Germany-based

multinational—No. 76 on the Fortune Global 500. Of motorcycle-producing companies, only Honda and Volkswagen (owner of Ducati) are larger. Sixty percent of Bosch’s business is automotive parts, and it specializes in sophisticated electronic or electro-mechanical systems, things such as engine ECUs, vehicle-stability systems, and ABS systems, though it makes items as common as spark plugs or windshield wipers.

The company also specializes in the manufacture of tiny and sophisticated MEMS (micro-electro-mechanicalsystem) sensors, such as the Bosch six-axis inertial sensor that allows every iPhone to know exactly at what angle you’re holding it and exactly how you’re moving it.

Creating this kind of technology is both expensive and profitable: The intellectual-property moat of patents and expertise allow suppliers such as Bosch to have higher margins than any of their automotive or motorcycle customers. And clearly, Bosch would like more of its products to make up every future motorcycle, and what better way to do that than to sell you even before it tries to pitch the new technology to motorcycle companies.

Accordingly, Bosch is repurposing some of its automotive technology to work on motorcycles, creating new gadgets that increase the ease of riding and—to varying extent—rider safety. One such system is its automated cruise control. By adding the same radar sensors used on many new cars to the front and rear of a bike, it allows a motorcycle so equipped to track cars up to 500 feet away.

I had a chance to try the ACC system on the autobahn in heavy traffic, and it dutifully adjusted speed to match the car in front, or to your desired speed if there is no traffic.

To do that, it works only on motorcycles already equipped with Bosch’s MSC (motorcycle-stability control) system, which already has one of Bosch’s six-axis sensors acting as an inner ear, letting the bike know whether you’re fully leaned over. It needs to know that because the ACC system uses not just throttle control, but also brake control (up to 0.5 G’s, or about half the motorcycle’s limit) to respond to what the car you’re following is doing. Like many automotive systems, it stops following as speed drops below about 20 mph, so it’s not a complete answer to stop-and-go traffic.

The rear-facing radar unit on the system has another function: BSD, or blind-spot detection. If a car is coming up quickly behind you in an adjacent lane, a flasher on a mirror stalk blinks, warning you it’s not safe to make a lane change. This is a big deal in Germany because closing speeds on autobahns can be absurdly high, and pulling out to pass can sometimes see a rider vaulted into the next German state by a 150 mph Mercedes in the fast lane.

Similarly, the front radar has another function: forward-collision warning, or FCW. Approach a car too quickly and closely from the rear, and a warning light flashes on the dash, and, depending on how a bike manufacturer implements the system, a haptic warning might tingle your handlebar while a Bluetooth speaker in your helmet beeps. With only the dash warning in the prototype, I found it fairly useless because looking at the dash while approaching a car too quickly was unnatural. These radar-based systems, I was told, will see production soon, within a year or so.

A little further out is Bosch’s emergency-call system, which would dial 911 if you crash. Again, the six-axis sensor of the MSC system is the key, and what Bosch engineers have been developing is the software to distinguish a real crash from a motorcycle falling off its sidestand, for example.

The emergency-call system adds a cellphone-size communications module and an additional button that will allow you to override the call if the system has somehow misjudged an event. The European Union has already mandated such systems for future automobiles, and the impression that Bosch left was that it was ready to implement it for motorcycles when the regulatory dust has settled and the rules written. You will not see this next year.

Nor will the rocket-powered “slip mitigation” appear soon. The system doesn’t use chemical rockets, but rather cold-gas thrusters. The prototype system uses four cold-gas generators (argon-helium gas) normally used in a few cars to inflate airbags. But in this system, it shoots a singular jet of gas laterally out the side of the motorcycle if its rider is so unfortunate to hit a small patch of something slippery. The effect is twofold: The thrust from the jet pushes the motorcycle back online while also driving the tires harder into the pavement to recover traction.

Engineer Anja Wahl, the project lead, explained that the system really was just proof of concept, and that an eventual production system wouldn’t necessarily use automotive airbag components; that was just for convenience. Bosch had done surveys of motorcyclists indicating hitting a slippery patch was one of their most common fears, and Wahl and her team had been tasked to do something about that. Since Bosch already had wheel-speed sensors with its ABS system and inertial sensors in its MSC system, it wasn’t hard to detect when a biker hit a slippery patch in a corner and the bike began to yaw and its front wheel tuck. But the question was, what do you do then?

Since most motorcyclists don’t have Marc Marquez’s skill of holding up the bike with knees and elbows, some kind of new force would have to be added to the system. So Wahl began exploring what a rocket could do. Using 3D full-physics simulation software, her team began modeling how much thrust was needed, and where the jet should be placed. As to the first part, she wouldn’t share, declaring it a “key secret.” As to the second, the jet needed to be as low as possible, and on the system I saw installed on a KTM 1190 Adventure, relatively close to the front wheel.

The system apparently works, at least on a small slippery patch. With a bike equipped with outriggers and being ridden by a stunt rider, Bosch demonstrated what happens with and without the system if a hard-cornering machine strikes a loose patch of gravel. Without, the bike yaws and the front wheel tucks, and the rider is saved only by the outriggers. Then came the earplugs and system engagement. With the earplugs in and the bike 100 feet away when the jet blasted, the thruster was loud, but almost certainly less so than a 12-gauge-shotgun discharge. And, watching slow-motion video afterward, the bike clearly held its path without the front wheel turning in.

Given the speed and the about 2-foot width of the gravel patch, the jet probably acts for something like 50 milliseconds (1/20 of a second), and the thrust it produces has to equal a significant percentage of rider and bike weight. Of course, the system as demonstrated was a single-shot system; heaven help you if you hit two slippery patches, or one long one.

It seems far-fetched, but Bosch says we can expect to see the slip-mitigation system on a production vehicle in as little as five to 10 years, if the company can find a manufacturer to partner with on development.