New frontiers of Robust Design with applications to motorcycles

Most of the literature on Robust Design has so far focused on making technical performances of products and processes as much insensitive as possible to the action of noise factors, often representing physical variables. When studying the human-machine interaction, we can try to achieve system robustness to “human” noise factors in general, by considering variations in: psychological impact, body shapes and cognitive psychology in usage. These are new frontiers of Robust Design. This work started from three research lines, namely Kansei Engineering, Robust Ergonomic Design, and Human Machine interface design, the former involving cognitive and psychological aspects within product placement, the second addressing human body variation, related to driving comfort and feeling, the latter focused on understanding a robust way to approach the Human Machine interaction in usage, tuning and optimizing physical, functional and dynamical characteristics of the motorcycle, also using the results of the first two research lines: machine features from the first and rider posture from the second. A Six Sigma framework (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control - DMAIC) has been followed to better organize the flow of ideas for each field. The machine design is here figured as a process subjected to continuous improvement issue. DMAIC is just considered as a suitable framework showing how the different research purposes have been pursued during their development, as well as a research process can be approached like a production one: they both have input parameters, noise factors and final target. The aim of this work is to show how to integrate three different fields in the early concept design phases of a new motorcycle model: the machine features/strengths (engine, brakes, power, shapes, preparation) defined under the customer perspective, the ergonomic interface, both static and dynamic, and finally the relation between machine geometric features and dynamic strengths, through the user style filter.