Mountain bikers have been leaning on motors and batteries to get us up hills for a while, and GPS systems to get us back home safely for even longer. Shimano has Autoshift and SRAM developed Eagle Powertrain with Auto Shift so you don’t have to bother with gear changes anymore. And then there’s Magura, which introduced Bosch eBike ABS so you can haul on the anchors on slippy roots without a second thought. 

But then last week we had a glimpse of the future, and boy was it weird. You probably saw it already, that robot bike doing trials riding, but it got me thinking. If machines are already helping our legs, brains and fingers on the bike, how long before we’re relying on robots to help us ride technical trails too? And in case you missed, here’s the vid…

If your initial reaction is one of Black Mirror horror at this dystopian vision of mountain biking, then I’ve got bad news. Worrying about machine intervention in mountain biking is as pointless as panicking about AI. It’s already way ahead of where we realise it is and already has a longer tail in tech than you probably recognise too. 

I’m not just talking about the change in attitude to e-bikes that’s occurred in the past few years. I can remember the outrage people had to reviews of early eebs, they said it was encouraging cheaters and wasn’t proper mountain biking. Now Mick Kirkman has had to go into hiding after daring to suggest all is not wonderful about augmented wattage riding, in his e-bike love-hate relationship opinion piece.

The Tallboy was groundbreaking, one of the first 29ers that really rode well it’s a mark in the sand of mtb development

Long before websites like this were a thing I can remember regular writer Paul Burwell saying in MBR’s precursor MBi magazine that suspension was pointless because we had two feet of travel in our arms. Want to get really retro? The original ‘mountain bike’ riders in California broke the stagnation of a century of road bike design by breeding Italian thoroughbreds with local beach cruisers to create their Clunkers and the rest is hysterical history. 

They’re all tech advances that have allowed us to go off-road and have a laugh more easily and they’ve been going on for nearly fifty years. So while you’re obviously welcome to draw your own line of indignation in the dirt and declare ‘that’s enough for me’ it’s not going to stop progress.

What’s really interesting is that the basics you’d need to start creating rider assist are actually largely already present in current cutting edge bikes – told you it had already crept up on us. 

AI is already on plenty of high end mountain bikes, just look at RockShox Flight Attendant for proof

Bosch’s Race motor-equipped e-bikes have already got a pre-programmed surge to hoik us up small steps if we stop pedalling. RockShox Flight Attendant uses an array of accelerometers to create a constantly updating 3D ride map to control the compression behaviour of suspension.

What if it linked to rebound too and at the same time as it unleashed an undamped deep stroke return, the motor gave a sudden trials bike style power blip? Your bike would launch upwards like everyone’s favourite gravity defying ginger, and Flight Attendant would truly earn its name. 

I’m sad the Amflow can’t actually fly, with its DJI motor, although no one told test rider Muldoon that

And while I’m still bitterly disappointed DJI’s Amflow bike doesn’t actually deploy tiny rotors and fly, there’s got to be some serious drone crossover we can implement this side of getting airborne.

Camera based terrain avoidance to stop you riding into trees? Steering dampers linked to gimbal gyroscopes for far more sophisticated stability than Canyon’s elastic KIS reins? A version of the same programming that prevents drones flying into airports instead keeping idiots from stopping on the landings of big jumps or pushing back up DH runs. Why not a Waze style system that gives you live updates on hazards other riders have spotted?

On a bigger scale I had a chat years ago with someone from SRAM years ago that confirmed that the amount of data being harvested by their Flight Attendant and AXS ecosystem was far beyond what they were currently using to sort your shifting and suspension.

Could screens like this one day tell you to book a coach, look further down the trail, or stop and drink a beer?

It’s already building up a picture of how you ride so it can recommend when you should service your suspension, recharge your battery or add two clicks of low speed. So why not let it suggest other tracks you might want to ride that suit your preferred profile. Or suggest an approved coach if you’re not going faster?

Most GPS / ride app systems can be synced with your training plan anyway and some e-bikes can be set to give a consistent rider power output. Match the two together and you’ve basically got a version of Zwift ERG mode so you can do your science based workouts automatically while riding round the woods. 

Alternatively, if you’re more adipose than athletically poised it could suggest a diet if you’re sagging more with the same pressures. Or a riding group if it never senses another bike in close proximity yet knows you’re on dating apps more than the trails.

And this isn’t even remotely far fetched either (OK maybe the Tinder/Grindr bit is). This kind of electronic assist is what most car reviews centre around now because the basic driving dynamics and performance are totally sorted. 

And with mountain biking sales stalled and the cycle industry hitting 25 year low in the UK, the thought of a whole suite of new features to add to any bike that can be switched on/off by subscription sounds like exactly the USP brands are gagging for right now. We should point out though that BMW quietly dropped its heated seat subscription model, just a year after launching it.

So while that two wheeled robot jumping onto a table might have grabbed our attention, we’re actually a lot further down the mechanical assistance wormhole than you might have realised already. 

And if that frightens the life out of you don’t worry, like anything else you don’t have to buy into it. Just carry on nursing your sketchy handling, skinny-tyred rigid-forked bike for maximum ‘involvement’ and ‘interaction’. Someone will try and tell you it’s a whole new invention called a gravel bike though…