Learning to ride a bicycle is already hard enough, and for many new riders, learning to shift gears is nearly impossible. Transcend Bicycle is producing an automatic continuously variable bike transmission (CVT) that will change gear ratios for the rider steplessly, automatically, and effortlessly. Currently, Transcend’s alpha prototype is able to change gears from one sensor input, however for the beta prototype, it will be able to change gears automatically based on sensor data . This challenge is both algorithmic and mechanical in nature. After alpha development is complete, Transcend will create the beta prototype, building off of alpha testing data and aimed at industry leading performance. This requires a hardware redesign, software optimization, and user experience refinement.

Our team collaborated with Mechanical Engineering 50 on this project.