Yamaha Hatsudoki Kabushiki Kaisha

Aisin Corporation

Toshifumi Uchiyama

Keizo Araki

Shota Kubo

Keisuke Terada

Tatsuya Nagata

Masatomo Kanehara

Ryo Sasaki

Tomoro Morita

A leaning vehicle including a vehicle body, a steerable front wheel set swivelable around an axis extending in an up-down direction, a rear wheel set, a turn operation input device that receives a turn operation and transmits the turn operation non-mechanically, a leaning device including a lean actuator that leans the vehicle body, the steerable front wheel set and the rear wheel set to a leftward or rightward direction, and a centripetal force generator including a centripetal force generation actuator, which outputs a controllable torque to thereby generate an additional centripetal force that acts on the steerable front wheel set and the rear wheel set during a turn of the leaning vehicle. The controller controls the torque while controlling the lean actuator in accordance with the received turn operation, to thereby control a leaning condition of the vehicle body during the turn and to control generation of the additional centripetal force.

Leaning vehicle with a steerable front wheel

A leaning vehicle including a vehicle body, front and rear wheels, a leaning mechanism that causes the vehicle body and the front and rear wheels to lean left or right when the leaning vehicle turns left or right, a lean actuator, a support stand, a detection device that detects a getting on intention input and or a getting off intention input, which respectively indicate that a rider of the leaning vehicle intends to get on and off the leaning vehicle, and a control device configured to control the lean actuator to thereby control a lean angle of the vehicle body while the vehicle body is in motion, based on a manipulation that the rider performs for turning in the left or right direction, and control the lean angle of the vehicle body while the leaning vehicle is not in motion, based on a detection result of the detection device.

Leaning vehicle

A leaning vehicle, including a vehicle body, one steerable front wheel and two rear wheels, or two steerable front wheels and one or two rear wheels, a suspension mechanism, a steering mechanism, a steering controller, and an up-down direction acceleration detector attached to the vehicle body or the suspension mechanism. The two steerable front wheels or the two rear wheels are arranged side by side to form a left-right pair of wheels. The up-down direction acceleration detector detects an acceleration in an up-down direction of the leaning vehicle or the vehicle body, generated as one wheel in the left-right pair of wheels passes a bump or a pothole in a road. The steering controller so controls the one or two steerable front wheels that the one or two steerable front wheels are in a free-steering state, so as to swivel around a steering axis freely, based on the detected acceleration.

Leaning vehicle with a left-right pair of wheels

Growing community of inventors

Shizuoka, Japan

Toshifumi Uchiyama