You go into the gym and hop on this exercise bike, then enter your height, weight, and the type of bike you normally ride (mountain, road, hybrid). Then you pick the course you want to ride today.
Using that information, the bike figures a decent approximation of your rolling resistance and your cross section for wind resistance calculations. (The deluxe model has sensors to determine if you're riding upright or in a tuck). It then automatically adjusts the pedal resistance to match, running it up as you go faster or start climbing, so you get a reasonable approximation of a real ride.
This would primarily be of use to real cyclists who want to stay in some degree of training during the local off season or bad weather.-- MechE, Aug 18 2014 I thought this would have something to do with periodic intelligent guerrilla warfare.
If you want to do this, then why not go all the way and have gym equipment with gigantic fans and sprinklers?. The gear could be adjusted for steady headwinds, intermittent cross winds, continuous downpours or just cooling sprinkles.-- normzone, Aug 18 2014 I know you're being facetious, but the wind from a fan doesn't actually do anything unless you're actually free to roll. If you put a real bike on a treadmill, that's another story.
The programming for this wouldn't be that difficult, rolling resistance is fairly standard based on weight, and while the cross-section calculations aren't exact, they'd be close enough. Obviously you'd still need to be able to tweak it up or down, but at least this way it would be a lot harder to be lazy because the resistance "feels wrong".
(title edited for clarity)-- MechE, Aug 18 2014 The real world often has hills in it, which automatically increase resistance to any bicycle rider. Why not imagine that "dumb" exercycle is simply set to represent some degree of hill-climb?-- Vernon, Aug 18 2014 Well, your idea of course makes more sense than mine.
But I would go to the gym to ride my machine, and I'm afraid I wouldn't on yours ;-)-- normzone, Aug 18 2014 [Vernon] My concern is the other way, it's to easy to set the bike light, and either not realize it, or lie to yourself that it feels about right when you start slacking off. Also, this way you could train for a specific course or race if you wanted to, since the resistance could reflect real world grades, for instance.
Now that I think about it, it probably makes sense for this to have a "shift" button, which of course drops the resistance, but lowers your nominal speed, and the course is programmed by distance. A big portion of riding efficiently is maintaining cadence over a range of conditions.-- MechE, Aug 18 2014 In the voice of Bones "He's dead, gym" referring to the propensity of Star Trek security officers to over-do the exercise in a futile attempt to avoid being the first person to be shot.
A truly smart resistance bicycle would recognise me, and set the resistance to zero, or feel the sharp end of a crowbar...
NB wonders at Borg exercise bike, presumably it just free-wheels, as resistance is futile.-- not_morrison_rm, Aug 19 2014 random, halfbakery