Gyrocar
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
His actually pre-dates this, with him patenting the design in 1903, developing a working model in 'about 1907' (according to my photos of the display) and a full-sized one in 1909. That suggests, assuming the parent wiki is correct, that the idea of a gyro automobile was described in fantasy after a gyro rail vehicle was fully developed. I find it quite interesting that it took that long for the idea to leap from one mode of transport to the other, and it probably speaks to how unfamiliar the automobile was as a concept even in the first decade of the 1900s.
His wiki [1] provides a bit more info, and links to the article on the gyro monorail car [2] with a wealth of detailed information about the design (much of which maps to the gyrocar).
Fascinating design.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Brennan [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail
So what's the benefit of a Gyrocar to compensate for that? A motorbike has the benefit of really dynamic performance coming from the ability to lean in to corners etc, but it seems to me that this thing would work more like a tricycle (ie no countersteer or lean) because the gyroscopes would keep the body of the car level.
2 wheels are also theoretically more manuevrable.
In practice this stuff mostly wasn't achieved, and there are also plenty of downsides, but then few people tried.
However I was more specifically referring to the "normal" gyrocar design which doesn't run on rails and is essentially (if I understand it correctly) a large motorcycle with the body of a car and an extra drivetrain powering a spinnig gyroscope on each side to keep the mass from falling over.
At this point the main thing limiting smaller curve radii is passenger comfort, because travelers don’t want to be subject to the vomit-inducing forces of a roller coaster. It’s why I am extremely skeptical whenever new land-based technologies promise higher top speeds and lower costs; most costs with these types of projects are land acquisition, and curves necessitate buying more property due to both the intersection of more property and the need to buy out some oddly shaped slivers that may result from a curved rail line splitting a property in two.
As an example, "monocopters" seem like the same sort of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocopter
That's generally not true. At best you'd roughly match an average car when balancing your weight perfectly; but typically you can only expect worse results when comparing the two.
But it applies less well to rubber. Rubber has significant natural adhesive qualities, so a normal force of zero Newtons gives a non zero acceleration. This adhesion dominates low weight acceleration. This is why performance cars tend to have larger tires. See dragsters for the logical conclusion. Without that adhesive quality, performance cars would prefer smaller tires for reduced air resistance.
The classical coefficient of friction model is one of "spherical frictionless cows in a vacuum" white lies we tell students to prevent them from getting overwhelmed by the hairiest differential equations imaginable.
> The principal advantage of the monorail cited by Shilovsky is the suppression of hunting oscillation, a speed limitation encountered by conventional railways at the time. Also, sharper turns are possible compared to the 7 km radius of turn typical of modern high-speed trains such as the TGV, because the vehicle will bank automatically on bends, like an aircraft,[1] so that no lateral centrifugal acceleration is experienced on board.
The main issue with curve radii today is that passengers would like a railway where they have a cup of tea or coffee on a table without it spilling. They definitely do not want to be strapped into a vomit-inducing roller coaster.
I've encountered this claim so many times over the years. The precession force I've observed when riding motorcycles, by moving the bars after the front wheel leaves the ground, is simply not that great. It's obviously not the primary force steering a motorcycle.
With the front tire in contact with the road, motorcycles can appear to steer from precession because they initiate turns unintuitively via inverted counter-steering. What's really happening is when you initiate a turn, the point at the road:tire interface immediately veers in the direction you pointed because of the tire's grip with the road. But since this point is well below the center of gravity of the motorcycle, instead of steering the entire bike in that direction, the bike falls down and leans in the opposite direction. Thanks to the angle of the fork there's a complementary geometric relationship between the bike's lean angle and the front wheel's steering angle in the direction of the lean. These are the primary mechanisms steering a motorcycle.
The same mechanism is present in automobiles, which also have a significant distance separating the road:tire interface from the center of gravity. But in those vehicles it's exhibited as body roll, which is then necessarily resisted by the suspension components like springs and anti-sway bars. Nobody claims precession causes automobile body roll, because it's more obvious what's going on there - and the driver doesn't steer backwards briefly at the start of every turn.
Precession is a fun demonstration in science class, and does enable a motorcycle rider to exert some control when on one wheel. But it simply isn't the primary mechanism steering a motorcycle.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2016/02/18/what-imm...
Motorcycle wheels are heavier and spin faster, so I'd expect the gyroscopic forces to be greater at speed, but the fact that you can go walking speed (or slower) on a motorcycle without falling over seems to disprove gyroscopic effects as a primary factor in stability.
The project is quite neat!
In the case of the Greek wrap, the reference isn't to the "rounded" pita shell, but the "turned" meat, roasted on a spit.
Another plus is easier ajustable ground clearance since there's only 2 points of contact; for an off-road-able vehicle that's a big plus; while at highway speeds you want a low center of gravity and less drag.
Will we see a 2 wheeled pickup truck reveal tomorrow? A BUV? (Battery Ultimate Vehicle) That would be "cyber from the future" alright. Dreaming out loud, but a ppl carrier (8-10 seater based on this would be totally out of this world)