6 ms·

Monowheels: Vehicles with Insufficient Wheels

ortusdux 3y ago
While not a monowheel, I feel the gryo monorail should be on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail
- NikkiA 3y ago
  It has it's own section in the trains part of Douglas' site: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/brennan/brennan.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/brennan/brennan.... and http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/scherlgyro/scherlgyro.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/scherlgyro/scher...
  - ortusdux 3y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the link! "Left: The Brennan model, carrying Brennan's daughter on an aerial wire. From a certain lugubrious quality in her facial expression, one has to conclude that the young lady was not entirely happy with her situation"
abeppu 3y ago
I find it interesting that there is such a convergence towards hubless wheels, which I think are challenging regardless of number. There are a handful that have hubs but if the passenger is on top they drift into unicycle territory, which feels like a different category -- and if the passenger is inside, then the whole vehicle is perhaps large enough that it's further out of reach for an independent hobbyist project?
throwup238 3y ago
I can’t believe this site doesn’t mention the South Park monowheel! [1] Until seeing this, I didn’t realize they were parodying anything or that this design was a real thing. And with so many variants! [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)
- groestl 3y ago
  Gallery opened in Mar 2001, and that episode aired only in November that year ^^ - maybe the southpark episode was even inspired by this site ;) Also love "I did a quick Alta Vista"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 4ec0755f5522 3y ago
  The episode was parodying the hype around a product code named "ginger": https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/dean-kamen-viral-mystery-invention-2001.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/dean-kamen-viral-my... Personally, I'm offended they omitted the Cobra Buzz Boar. That's all I see when I look at these monowheel photos/designs.
geor9e 3y ago
The website seems to end with a 2015 electric unicycle but not continue on with covering that form factor. Maybe because most people don't refer to those as monowheels anymore. http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorwhl5.htm#air http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorw... Also airwheel is kind of a random brand to showcase - Trevor Blackwell made an earlier one https://www.trevorblackwell.com/eunicycle https://www.trevorblackwell.com/eunicycle and Solowheel got the majority of the earlier patents (and royalties to this day). That form factor has come a long way since 2015 though. Check out this MotoGP style race, they're hitting 50+mph: https://youtu.be/fbX6qaWINBk?si=l2G0JnBxxCMP8a7e https://youtu.be/fbX6qaWINBk?si=l2G0JnBxxCMP8a7e I see them every day whizzing across San Francisco, especially on Van Ness passing all the cars. I know there's at least two shops in SF selling them, one in Potrero and one in Hayes Valley - https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles - https://lastmilepev.com/collections/electric-unicycle-euc https://lastmilepev.com/collections/electric-unicycle-euc Unicycle seems to be the winner. The "wrap around the body" form factor seems doomed from a physics point of view. That big of a diameter has way too much leverage, and the person sitting inside has too little. So you end up doing a flip instead of stopping. As such, their required stopping distances are very long compared to unicycles which can stop as well as a bicycle, if the rider is skilled.
- airstrike 3y ago
  ok, that race video was as fun to watch as it was unexpected
- dylan604 3y ago
  > The website seems to end with a 2015 With the style of the website, I'm shocked it has anything after 2000
- Panzer04 3y ago
  I don't think (electric included) unicycles will ever have the same stopping performance of conventional vehicles - the center of gravity is just much further forward than in any two-wheeled vehicle. The requirements imposed by the balancing mechanism limits the possible braking force to how far behind the wheel a person can get. They can still stop plenty fast enough for most purposes, though, and it's a very natural action compared to almost any other vehicle. On wheel size - yeah, its the case that the smaller the wheel, the more responsive a unicycle becomes to torques applied by a person's body. It becomes a tradeoff between the resilience of a large wheel to bumps and terrain, and the responsiveness afforded by a tiny wheel (which takes less torque to apply a given forward/backwards force)
unstatusthequo 3y ago
Glaring miss in the list? https://onewheel.com/ https://onewheel.com/ Love riding mine!
- pvg 3y ago
  It defines the monowheel as 'one big wheel with rider and engine (if any) INSIDE its circumference' so unless you are riding inside yours, it's probably not a miss.
- skenderbeu 3y ago
  OMG!!! Why isn't that wheel covered with a guard at the top?
John_da 3y ago
[flagged]
paddy_m 3y ago
Also the Ultimate Wheel. A unicycle without a seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRzqlh3728 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRzqlh3728
teruakohatu 3y ago
This musical not-monowheel the website links to is quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi4PiLSQhf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi4PiLSQhf0
grcggddddc 3y ago
> That this neglect is wholly justified is neither here nor there. Love this kind of site.
bediger4000 3y ago
What happens when you brake hard? I imagine some bicycle caliper brakes grabbing the wheel's rim, which if the coefficient of friction between tire and road is high enough, causes the driver to just go round with the still rolling wheel. Seems unsafe.
- geor9e 3y ago
  If you brake too hard on a bicycle, you flip over too, especially downhill. You can brake up until the point that you've popped a front wheelie. Bicyclists usually forgo most of the available braking force, by solely using the rear brake, for this reason. Same for monocycles. If you go past 90 degrees, there's no point in further braking force. If the brakes are electric, they would throttle themselves to that limit, so you have max braking force. Just like anti-lock brakes on a car. All that said, the terrible wheel-to-rider leverage ratio dooms the design to always have poor stopping distance. Probably not any worse that a bicycle without a front brake, though.
  - egh 3y ago
    It's my firm opinion, and that of many people who've looked at it, that flipping over the bars is caused by the rider not bracing themselves as they use the very powerful front brakes. https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-to-brake-on-a-bicycle/ https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-to-brake-on-a-bicycle/ https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html If most cyclists don't use the front brake, that is their loss. Most advanced cyclists, in my experience, rely heavily on the more powerful front brake.
    - Panzer04 3y ago
      In a physics sense it would happen when the torque applied by the forward momentum is higher than the force applied by gravity - the higher you are above the contact point with the ground, the more torque you apply and the more likely you are to rotate around the wheel. The lower and further back you can get your weight, the more force you should theoretically be able to apply (being wary of deweighting the front wheel too much such that a hard front brake causes a skid instead)
drpixie 3y ago
> Vehicles with Insufficient Wheels Nothing insufficient about monowheels. Should not the title be "When one is sufficient"?
- addled 3y ago
  Vehicles Within Sufficient Wheels?
cushychicken 3y ago
Is this the same Douglas Self as the amplifier and audio electronics guru?
drewzero1 3y ago
I don't know how many nights I've lost track of time reading through this site, mostly in the 'unusual locomotives' section.[1] (I'm in a rail modeling group where some of us are really into the oddballs, so it comes up pretty often there!) 1: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm
- ljf 3y ago
  Same - I first saw the 'N-wheeled vehicles' posted to HN years ago and lost a good day to it: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwheelcar.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwhee...
- rob74 3y ago
  Oh, wow, guess like I will have to take another look at this site in my free time (at the office now). I hadn't even heard about electrically heated steam locomotives until now (http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisselc.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisse...).
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    My personal favorite is the articulated locomotives, especially the Klein-Lindner system: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/klienlindner/klienlindner.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/klienlindner/kli... It probably took me about a week to get a full idea of how it works, and I'm hoping to create a model to help myself really understand.
saagarjha 3y ago
> Pictures of the earliest real monowheels kindly provided by Jackie Chabanais, who can be seen below gerbilling happily in his Tractowheel. A somewhat unfortunate name, I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling
mavhc 3y ago
My favourite page on the site is http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwheelcar.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwhee... (Oddly second site this week that doesn't work when you force https)
lifestyleguru 3y ago
The fundamental problem with mono wheels is emergency braking. I like to be able to stop almost instantly in certain situations.
- psd1 3y ago
  Like a segfault? (comment thread directly above is discussing the segway)
sedatk 3y ago
The pictures in the post reminds me of South Park’s IT episode which satirized airlines and Segway’s launch.
ForOldHack 3y ago
"if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bicycle." Vehicles with Insufficient Wheels do not go anywhere. A car with 4 flat tires, requires a vehicle with 4 good tires to tow it away. A Monowheel has the necessary and sufficient number of wheels to move. Monowheels are just way way cool.
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  But make no mistake, this website is a comprehensive catalog of ever mono/diwheel I have ever seen, known of, or heard of. The title is a terrible misnomer, and the web site, is absolutely comprehensive.

While not a monowheel, I feel the gryo monorail should be on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail

NikkiA 3y ago
It has it's own section in the trains part of Douglas' site: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/brennan/brennan.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/brennan/brennan.... and http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/scherlgyro/scherlgyro.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/scherlgyro/scher...
- ortusdux 3y ago
  Awesome, thanks for the link! "Left: The Brennan model, carrying Brennan's daughter on an aerial wire. From a certain lugubrious quality in her facial expression, one has to conclude that the young lady was not entirely happy with her situation"

abeppu 3y ago

I find it interesting that there is such a convergence towards hubless wheels, which I think are challenging regardless of number. There are a handful that have hubs but if the passenger is on top they drift into unicycle territory, which feels like a different category -- and if the passenger is inside, then the whole vehicle is perhaps large enough that it's further out of reach for an independent hobbyist project?

throwup238 3y ago

I can’t believe this site doesn’t mention the South Park monowheel! [1] Until seeing this, I didn’t realize they were parodying anything or that this design was a real thing. And with so many variants! [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)

groestl 3y ago
Gallery opened in Mar 2001, and that episode aired only in November that year ^^ - maybe the southpark episode was even inspired by this site ;) Also love "I did a quick Alta Vista"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
4ec0755f5522 3y ago
The episode was parodying the hype around a product code named "ginger": https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/dean-kamen-viral-mystery-invention-2001.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/dean-kamen-viral-my... Personally, I'm offended they omitted the Cobra Buzz Boar. That's all I see when I look at these monowheel photos/designs.

geor9e 3y ago

The website seems to end with a 2015 electric unicycle but not continue on with covering that form factor. Maybe because most people don't refer to those as monowheels anymore. http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorwhl5.htm#air http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorw... Also airwheel is kind of a random brand to showcase - Trevor Blackwell made an earlier one https://www.trevorblackwell.com/eunicycle https://www.trevorblackwell.com/eunicycle and Solowheel got the majority of the earlier patents (and royalties to this day). That form factor has come a long way since 2015 though. Check out this MotoGP style race, they're hitting 50+mph: https://youtu.be/fbX6qaWINBk?si=l2G0JnBxxCMP8a7e https://youtu.be/fbX6qaWINBk?si=l2G0JnBxxCMP8a7e I see them every day whizzing across San Francisco, especially on Van Ness passing all the cars. I know there's at least two shops in SF selling them, one in Potrero and one in Hayes Valley - https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles - https://lastmilepev.com/collections/electric-unicycle-euc https://lastmilepev.com/collections/electric-unicycle-euc Unicycle seems to be the winner. The "wrap around the body" form factor seems doomed from a physics point of view. That big of a diameter has way too much leverage, and the person sitting inside has too little. So you end up doing a flip instead of stopping. As such, their required stopping distances are very long compared to unicycles which can stop as well as a bicycle, if the rider is skilled.

airstrike 3y ago
ok, that race video was as fun to watch as it was unexpected
dylan604 3y ago
> The website seems to end with a 2015 With the style of the website, I'm shocked it has anything after 2000
Panzer04 3y ago
I don't think (electric included) unicycles will ever have the same stopping performance of conventional vehicles - the center of gravity is just much further forward than in any two-wheeled vehicle. The requirements imposed by the balancing mechanism limits the possible braking force to how far behind the wheel a person can get. They can still stop plenty fast enough for most purposes, though, and it's a very natural action compared to almost any other vehicle. On wheel size - yeah, its the case that the smaller the wheel, the more responsive a unicycle becomes to torques applied by a person's body. It becomes a tradeoff between the resilience of a large wheel to bumps and terrain, and the responsiveness afforded by a tiny wheel (which takes less torque to apply a given forward/backwards force)

unstatusthequo 3y ago

Glaring miss in the list? https://onewheel.com/ https://onewheel.com/ Love riding mine!

pvg 3y ago
It defines the monowheel as 'one big wheel with rider and engine (if any) INSIDE its circumference' so unless you are riding inside yours, it's probably not a miss.
skenderbeu 3y ago
OMG!!! Why isn't that wheel covered with a guard at the top?

John_da 3y ago

[flagged]

paddy_m 3y ago

Also the Ultimate Wheel. A unicycle without a seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRzqlh3728 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WRzqlh3728

teruakohatu 3y ago

This musical not-monowheel the website links to is quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi4PiLSQhf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi4PiLSQhf0

grcggddddc 3y ago

> That this neglect is wholly justified is neither here nor there. Love this kind of site.

bediger4000 3y ago

What happens when you brake hard? I imagine some bicycle caliper brakes grabbing the wheel's rim, which if the coefficient of friction between tire and road is high enough, causes the driver to just go round with the still rolling wheel. Seems unsafe.

geor9e 3y ago
If you brake too hard on a bicycle, you flip over too, especially downhill. You can brake up until the point that you've popped a front wheelie. Bicyclists usually forgo most of the available braking force, by solely using the rear brake, for this reason. Same for monocycles. If you go past 90 degrees, there's no point in further braking force. If the brakes are electric, they would throttle themselves to that limit, so you have max braking force. Just like anti-lock brakes on a car. All that said, the terrible wheel-to-rider leverage ratio dooms the design to always have poor stopping distance. Probably not any worse that a bicycle without a front brake, though.
- egh 3y ago
  It's my firm opinion, and that of many people who've looked at it, that flipping over the bars is caused by the rider not bracing themselves as they use the very powerful front brakes. https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-to-brake-on-a-bicycle/ https://www.renehersecycles.com/how-to-brake-on-a-bicycle/ https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html If most cyclists don't use the front brake, that is their loss. Most advanced cyclists, in my experience, rely heavily on the more powerful front brake.
  - Panzer04 3y ago
    In a physics sense it would happen when the torque applied by the forward momentum is higher than the force applied by gravity - the higher you are above the contact point with the ground, the more torque you apply and the more likely you are to rotate around the wheel. The lower and further back you can get your weight, the more force you should theoretically be able to apply (being wary of deweighting the front wheel too much such that a hard front brake causes a skid instead)

drpixie 3y ago

> Vehicles with Insufficient Wheels Nothing insufficient about monowheels. Should not the title be "When one is sufficient"?

addled 3y ago
Vehicles Within Sufficient Wheels?

cushychicken 3y ago

Is this the same Douglas Self as the amplifier and audio electronics guru?

drewzero1 3y ago

I don't know how many nights I've lost track of time reading through this site, mostly in the 'unusual locomotives' section.[1] (I'm in a rail modeling group where some of us are really into the oddballs, so it comes up pretty often there!) 1: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/locoloco.htm

ljf 3y ago
Same - I first saw the 'N-wheeled vehicles' posted to HN years ago and lost a good day to it: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwheelcar.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwhee...
rob74 3y ago
Oh, wow, guess like I will have to take another look at this site in my free time (at the office now). I hadn't even heard about electrically heated steam locomotives until now (http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisselc.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisse...).
- drewzero1 3y ago
  My personal favorite is the articulated locomotives, especially the Klein-Lindner system: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/klienlindner/klienlindner.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/klienlindner/kli... It probably took me about a week to get a full idea of how it works, and I'm hoping to create a model to help myself really understand.

saagarjha 3y ago

> Pictures of the earliest real monowheels kindly provided by Jackie Chabanais, who can be seen below gerbilling happily in his Tractowheel. A somewhat unfortunate name, I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbilling

mavhc 3y ago

My favourite page on the site is http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwheelcar.htm http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/nwheelcar/nwhee... (Oddly second site this week that doesn't work when you force https)

lifestyleguru 3y ago

The fundamental problem with mono wheels is emergency braking. I like to be able to stop almost instantly in certain situations.

psd1 3y ago
Like a segfault? (comment thread directly above is discussing the segway)

sedatk 3y ago

The pictures in the post reminds me of South Park’s IT episode which satirized airlines and Segway’s launch.

ForOldHack 3y ago

"if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bicycle." Vehicles with Insufficient Wheels do not go anywhere. A car with 4 flat tires, requires a vehicle with 4 good tires to tow it away. A Monowheel has the necessary and sufficient number of wheels to move. Monowheels are just way way cool.

ForOldHack 3y ago
But make no mistake, this website is a comprehensive catalog of ever mono/diwheel I have ever seen, known of, or heard of. The title is a terrible misnomer, and the web site, is absolutely comprehensive.