MotoGP in 2020: riders bash fairings with unmanned bike-bots

The Rossis of tomorrow will do battle with riderless bikes like this, according to one Japanese bike visionary.

31-year-old Yutaka Igarashi works a 40-hour-week in a sawmill cutting timber, but by night he designs some of the best bike concepts we’ve seen.

You can see his vision of a successor to the legendary Brough Superior in this week’s MCN. This riderless MotoGP bike represent’s over a year’s work by the partially colour-blind, self-taught designer.

“When you design a bike the heaviest individual part is the battery. In order to use this weight positively, I came up with the idea of an oil pressured actuator swinging arm. By swinging the heavy battery, the bike’s body can control its balance agilely, like riders do” he says.

Yutaka says there’s a precedent for such man-versus-machine battles: “If unmanned bikes were actually allowed in MotoGP it would be a fantastic contest – man versus machine always creates much interest, such as in the world of chess competition. This would draw a huge attention from the world to MotoGP.”