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Next Generation Bicycle Lock : Development of an Innovative Bicycle Lock Concept for Accell Group

Nijveen, B.E. (2022) Next Generation Bicycle Lock : Development of an Innovative Bicycle Lock Concept for Accell Group.

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Abstract:During the analysis, research is done to create a knowledge base for the rest of the assignment. It is concluded that bike thieves have four main methods to steal bikes: break the lock, pick the lock, lift the bike away, and steal parts. To prevent thieves from stealing bikes this should be made impossible or unrewarding. There are four main principles that can be used to achieve this: Locking the bike, deterring the thief, making the bike useless after theft, or by tracking the stolen bike. Locking the bike with an ART approved lock is required by the insurance companies, this means that the lock should prevent the bike from being rolled away when locked. Locking the bike to the world makes it harder for the thieve to steal the bike since it cannot be lifted away. Deterring the thief can be done with alarms. This is done often in new innovative locks. For this assignment not much focus was given on alarms since it is more like an additional function that can be added to almost any concept rather than a locking concept itself. Making the bike useless can be achieved by integrating the lock into the bike design. The aim of this method is that breaking the lock means breaking the bike itself making it useless for thieves to sell. Tracking a stolen bike will not prevent your bike from getting stolen but it will help you with finding it back. There are however a lot of third-party companies that offer tracking, so it is not deemed to be a requirement for the new lock to have tracking. Together with a stakeholder analysis, an analysis of all the current trends, a competition analysis, and an analysis of the use case of the current locks a list of requirements is made for the new concept that has four main pillars: anti-theft resistance needs to be improved, the user friendliness needs to be improved, the lock needs to be better integrated with the bike design, and the business case should be feasible. During the ideation phase a lot of ideas were created which were grouped into 11 main idea directions. With the help of the requirements from the analysis phase these idea directions were given scores. This was done more on feeling than on facts since the ideas were still very undefined. This scoring together with a discussion has led to three idea directions being chosen to develop into preliminary concepts. These were: a lock pin integrated in the dropout pad, a lock which is operated by the kick stand, and a chain lock which is stored over the rear carrier with a lock pin to lock the rear wheel. During the conceptualization, these three ideas are worked out further into preliminary concepts. The focus in this phase is on the technical aspects of the concepts mainly to find out if the idea is possible and feasible to produce. The lock pin in the dropout pad turned out to be less compact than hoped, and there will be a relatively easy method to break this lock open without damaging anything. This together with a relatively high cost price means that this concept is not selected. The kickstand lock turned out to be more like a switch for an electronic lock which could be coupled to for example the dropout pad lock. It was not selected because it offered limited added value for the increased cost price. The integrated chain lock was a much more feasible option that will be possible to make. The main downside is the limited chain length, but it was the only concept that could be locked to the world and give a high level of security. The cost price increase was also the lowest of all concepts and it has the highest potential to improve the user experience. Therefor this concept was chosen as the final concept. In the final development phase this concept was further improved, and a prototype was built. With this functional prototype, user tests and real-world tests could be performed to give realistic insights in how this lock would function. It showed that the concept indeed has good potential by being faster than the current ring lock with chain lock during the user test and it scored higher on ease of use and looks. It also ticks off a lot of the requirements. There are however also some points of improvement, meanly with the chain itself and the lock pin holder. The main concern of this concept remains the limited chain length which gives problems when parking the bike in a bicycle rack.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
Accell Group, HEERENVEEN, Nederland
Faculty:ET: Engineering Technology
Subject:01 general works
Programme:Industrial Design Engineering MSc (66955)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/90927
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