A bicycle can be balanced by stochastic optimal feedback control but only with accurate speed estimates

Eric Maris

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278961

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 26, 2022
26 Aug 2022 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: BalanceBicycleOFCReply2PlosCompBiolReviews_20220818.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278961.r001
27 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Ning Cai, Editor PONE-D-22-23009A bicycle can be balanced by stochastic optimal feedback control but only with accurate speed estimatesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Maris, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 11 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Please prepare a minor revision taking account of the suggestions. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? 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Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The paper overall is interesting. The author replies all the questions from previous reviewers. 1. One major concern is that the paper is too long and contains many known works. The author may consider condensing the work and focus more on the major contributions. The author discussed the human brain and neuro; However, it is not clear to see this in the control design part. 2. Is there any experiment validation of the proposed method. 3. There are still some typos. For instance, in line 26 and line 30, OFC are defined two times. 4. It is not common to see “I” in a research paper. Instead, most time we use “We”. Reviewer #2: he work is very interesting and difficult. It should be encouraged. There are some minor problems that I hope can be corrected. When the first time a variable appears, it should be written in its full name. For example, BMX on line 310 and LQR on line 552. In line 1467, the units of curvature should be m^{-1}. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. 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Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278961.r002
Revision 1
11 Nov 2022 Author Response Academic editor 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf >> I made the following changes to the paper’s style: (1) I placed the Methods section after the Introduction, and (2) I changed the formatting of the headings. << 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. >> I ticked the box “The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.” and did not add a Financial Disclosure section because this was not asked for. Should I do something more? << 3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. >> In my Data Availability statement I have indicated that “All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.”. This paper uses simulations to investigate whether a computational model is plausible for actual bicycle balance control. The documented computer code (Matlab Live scripts) to run these simulations and to extend on them, are provided in the Supporting Information. No experiment has been conducted to test this model, but we make use of empirical information. In fact, we know from experience what turn radiuses are physically possible, and what lean angles are acceptable for a rider. << 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. >> I have performed this check, and no papers have been retracted. << Reviewer #1 The paper overall is interesting. The author replies all the questions from previous reviewers. 1. One major concern is that the paper is too long and contains many known works. The author may consider condensing the work and focus more on the major contributions. The author discussed the human brain and neuro; However, it is not clear to see this in the control design part. >> It is good to know that the original submission to PLOS Computational Biology was 11 pages shorter than the current version. The length of the current version has increased because I had to reply to the criticism of Reviewer #2 of PLOS Computational Biology. Here, I copy his first three points, all of which ask for more information to be included in the paper: “1. The majority of the introduction includes no citations to support the author’s statements. The definition of balance for walking, for example, is well-defined in the literature. 2. There has been significant, serious, and quality research on bicycle dynamics in the past 20 years. While the author does identify a subset of the published works, there also exists significant work examining the human control of the bicycle – most work in this area has been led by Dr. Arend Schwab or Dr. Jason Moore. The current study is not a rigorous scientific study, as it largely ignores the existing knowledge and best approaches for evaluating control models. 3. The author developed his own model of the bicycle rather than using the validated equations of motion for a bicycle. The bicycle the author uses can easily be obtained using the bicycle model of Meijaard et al. 2007 by simply choosing parameter values. The author spends way too much of the paper talking about the development of his own model, which would be unnecessary if he simply utilized the established linearized equations of motion for a bicycle.” << 2. Is there any experiment validation of the proposed method. >> I did not run an experiment to collect data for testing my model for bicycle balance control. Instead, I used simulations to investigate whether this model is plausible for actual bicycle balance control. For that, I do make use of empirical information. In fact, we know from experience what turn radiuses are physically possible, and what lean angles are acceptable for a rider. Therefore, an empirically plausible model must balance a bicycle without producing turn radiuses that are physically impossible, and/or lean angles that are unacceptable. My model does this. However, it is extremely sensitive to misestimation of the speed, and this is not empirically plausible given what we currently about how the CNS estimates speed. << 3. There are still some typos. For instance, in line 26 and line 30, OFC are defined two times. >> Thank you, I corrected those. << 4. It is not common to see “I” in a research paper. Instead, most time we use “We”. >> I am the sole author of this paper. I did a search on the web, and I found approximately as many fora/web pages that advise “I” for as single author paper as fora/web pages that advise “We”. << Reviewer #2 The work is very interesting and difficult. It should be encouraged. There are some minor problems that I hope can be corrected. When the first time a variable appears, it should be written in its full name. For example, BMX on line 310 and LQR on line 552. In line 1467, the units of curvature should be m^(-1). >> Thank you. I added the full names for BMX and LQR. However, I could not find an error w.r.t. the appropriate units of curvature. << Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: BalanceBicycleOFCResponseToReviewers_20221111.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278961.r003
25 Nov 2022 Decision Letter - Ning Cai, Editor A bicycle can be balanced by stochastic optimal feedback control but only with accurate speed estimates PONE-D-22-23009R1 Dear Dr. Maris, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: N/A Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: The authors responded properly to my comments. I think the manuscript can be accepted for publication. Reviewer #3: This paper presents a computational model of this neurobiological component, based on the theory of stochastic optimal feedback control. there is some theoretical value in this article and the quality of article to meet the requirements of the journal. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278961.r004
Formally Accepted
12 Dec 2022 Acceptance Letter - Ning Cai, Editor PONE-D-22-23009R1 A bicycle can be balanced by stochastic optimal feedback control but only with accurate speed estimates Dear Dr. Maris: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Ning Cai Section Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278961.r005

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