[HN Gopher] The bizarre Monowheel seen through vintage photographs
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The bizarre Monowheel seen through vintage photographs
Author : davesailer
Score : 28 points
Date : 2021-12-29 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rarehistoricalphotos.com)
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I love the impracticality of leaning over to see where you're
| going
| decafninja wrote:
| Seems like a problem that could be solved with cameras today.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Monowheels are really cool and totally impractical.
|
| If I had the space to store one, I'd probably buy one for shits
| and giggles.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Another one of those sites where have to manually object to
| legitimate interest manually 10 times...
| [deleted]
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Some of the mono-bi wheel tank designs people made models of
|
| https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932
| jfk13 wrote:
| There's also the Secret Weapon featured in a Dad's Army
| episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy
| [deleted]
| hagbard_c wrote:
| No images for me, digging deeper shows a "Rate limit exceeded,
| that's all we know" message from Google.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Some photos are on Google Cache
|
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&r...
| smusamashah wrote:
| Google cache link works
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
| jandrese wrote:
| The thing that surprised me the most were the ones that
| apparently saw the tremendous stability problems of the entire
| concept and decided to add an unguarded airplane propeller to the
| front to make sure any instability results in disaster.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I wonder what the advantages of having a giant wheel rather than
| a unicycle version were seen to be? Were pneumatic tires non-
| existent? Is it a balance thing?
|
| I think the quest of needing only one wheel never went away,
| today we have one-wheel skateboards and electric unicycles which
| might be looked at the same way in 100 years. (Or maybe we'll all
| finally adapt to rolling around on only one wheel)
| evan_ wrote:
| I bought a One Wheel at the beginning of summer and rode it
| everywhere for a couple months. I decided to take a break from
| it when hospitals started getting slammed with Delta. I never
| took a nosedive but the constant xrays of broken wrists and
| collarbones on r/onewheel started to get to me.
| burlesona wrote:
| I was wondering this too. Presumably the giant wheel offers a
| smoother ride since it can roll over larger potholes without
| bouncing into them? Still seems like it needs a good road
| though, hard to see how it would be stable or maneuverable
| enough for off-road.
| klipt wrote:
| Isn't that the same problem solved by treads on tanks?
| elihu wrote:
| In theory I suppose you could improve the braking ability quite a
| bit by having a flywheel spinning about an axis perpendicular to
| the axis the main wheel rotates at, to act a gyroscope and
| prevent the "gerbiling" problem the article mentions.
| kurthr wrote:
| That is an interesting design, but the first ideas I had of how
| to implement lead to the device turning (either Yaw or Roll)
| when the stopping (Pitch) torque is applied. This seems less
| than optimal!
|
| What I like about that however is that turning (and/or
| coordinated turning) could be implemented without requiring
| leaning over... that means you could have extremely tight
| turning radius!
|
| I always thought of these Monowheels as simply a rail car
| inside a large wheel... which has pretty limited advantages,
| while the momentum of the outer wheel has definite
| disadvantages.
|
| Now perhaps a flywheel in the opposite direction of the wheel
| (but planar with it) could be used to apply stopping force
| (without the yaw/roll) up to the limit of friction?
|
| The view issues could now also be resolved by simply putting
| cameras (or even old-timey periscopes) in so you could see
| straight ahead.
| arbitrage wrote:
| You could have two flywheels to balance the forces.
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(page generated 2021-12-29 23:01 UTC)