New test rigs reduce test time from 18 months to 10 days!

KTP Associate: Dan Hicks

Company: OSET Bikes

University of Brighton

The Project: to embed a scientifically informed design process to streamline and optimise electric trials bike design for the adult market. OSET is the world leader in the design/manufacture of electric trials bikes, their bikes are proven in competition, taking multiple national level victories against petrol bikes. The company has been pivotal in the almost complete replacement of petrol bikes with electric bikes in the child/youth market.

The company now sought to implement a new, formalised design process to bring an adult trials bike – featuring electronic control of the bike power management and the human-machine interface – to market. 

The KTP Associate

Dan has delivered an extremely fruitful, technically brilliant, and diverse range of projects for the company. Tackling everything with gusto, he has provided a strategically important project in areas of testing, design, manufacture, teamwork, knowledge transfer and training, marketing, supply chain development, that goes well beyond what should typically be expected of a single employee. 

Among his achievements are:

• Delivering a technical tour de force by extensively characterising clutch and engine performance for a range of leading petrol bikes. 
• Developed and overseen manufacture of a proprietary drivetrain system, including a gear reduction and electronic clutch including a novel haptic feedback system. 
• Designed a complete Chassis Test Procedure and developed 4 high quality test rigs which has reduced the time required to test frames and assure their performance from approx. 18 months to 10 days and added vital insight to the R&D process.
• Initiated the generation of extra commercial income through services to other, local SMEs to test bicycle wheel prototypes using OSET’s newly developed standard test rigs. 
• Led on and supported others in the development of topical, novel academic publications. 
• Facilitated and project managed £25k of KEEP+Matched Funding to engage two consultants from the University of Brighton to (1) provide a systematic review of OSET’s compliance requirements, indispensable in redesigning the core OSET supply chain, (2) design and prototype a proprietary electronic motor controller capable of implementing the proprietary clutchless’ drivetrain developed in the KTP, (3) write product design spec for a new, production powertrain, instrumental in the redesign of OSET’s core supply chain, (4) co-supervised 8 BEng/BSc Student Projects, 1 MEng student project and other links with the UOB, Company Client in MSc student’s project, guest lecture on product specifications, (5) proposed, facilitated and managed a project with a student from the UoB to redesign the User Experience for the bikes. 

Winners of this category will be announced in advance of the KTP Virtual Awards Ceremony which is at 4-5pm on Wednesday 9 September. Join us in our virtual world to celebrate all the winners – register here.

See below for a profile of each of the 18 finalists in the Future Innovator category of this year’s KTP Best of the Best Awards:

Muddasar Anwar  Delivering innovation for Sustainable Drainage System to prevent flooding.

Blessing Mbipom Creating online learning for GPs.

Laurence Foster: Innovations to “print” structures, transforming house building.

Declan Bryans: Creating greener energy with innovations in flow batteries.

Elle Perschke: Applying B2C methodologies to launch a new product within a B2B company.

Khai Nguyen: Inventing a new silicone composite for consumer fixing brand, Sugru.

Declan Bryans: Pushing flow battery storage capability to new limits.

Swapnil Khadke: Creating new liposome formulations for application in drug delivery

Leona McGirr: Creating an Antibody Library for fully human antibodies.

Dan Hicks: Developing a new design and testing process for electric trails bikes.

Dmitry Bogachov: Advancing Materials Science for Anilox technology.

Andrew Grounds: Transforming business models for Social Enterprise.

Lyndsey McKirdy: Enhancing data science capability at Aggreko.

Jack Tallant: Transforming reporting and delivery of Charity’s activities.

Xi Liu: Using AI to develop fraud detection and prevention services for law firm.

Alex Komninos: Transforming spreadsheets in to cognitive models at IBM

Harvey Kangley: Delivering exceptional NPD for rail electrification

George Harris: Developing advanced engineering for advanced intruder detection systems.

The Future Innovator category of the KTP Awards is supported by Ashorne Hill – a specialist training company which runs training programmes for all KTP Associates.

Want to find out more about working as a KTP Associate? More information here, and see the latest vacancies here.