Stay upright
MSc lab rotation project on bicycle balance control
Overview
This project investigated how people maintain bicycle balance when sensory information becomes uncertain or unreliable.
Although the project comes from sensorimotor control rather than language research, I found it conceptually connected to my broader interest in ambiguity resolution. In reading, people sometimes encounter sentences that are temporarily misleading and need to revise their interpretation. In balance control, people may similarly encounter a moment of uncertainty: for example, when visual information is no longer sufficient (e.g., through a blindfold), they need to adjust their strategy and rely more on other sources of information, such as proprioceptive feedback, to remain stable.
Reflection
This experience gave me a more realistic understanding of how complex experimental research is conducted in practice. Beyond the clean structure of methods and results presented in papers, I saw the preparation, troubleshooting, documentation, and teamwork required behind the scenes, from monitoring sensor recordings to identifying inconsistencies during preprocessing. This helped me appreciate that data analysis is closely connected to experimental decisions made during data collection, and that careful documentation is essential for making sense of complex behavioural data.
Project period
February 2026 – May 2026
Supervision
This project was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Eric Maris.
Read more
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