The bizarre Monowheel seen through vintage photographs | Hacker News Reader

The bizarre Monowheel seen through vintage photographs

rarehistoricalphotos.com

73 pointsdavesailer30 comments

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.

No images for me, digging deeper shows a "Rate limit exceeded, that's all we know" message from Google.

Some photos are on Google Cache

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&r...

Google cache link works https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Some of the mono-bi wheel tank designs people made models of

https://youtu.be/i4p25rzPDw8?t=932

There's also the Secret Weapon featured in a Dad's Army episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sazsy

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)

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.

My left arm is all messed up from an electric skateboard fall. Elbow had a fracture and wrist and shoulder severely sprained. I’m pretty sure some soft tissue damage occurred. It’s a year ago and I’m still trying to walk it off. I was only going about 10 mph of a max speed of 33 mph when I hit about a 4 inch wide crack in the asphalt. Was a low light situation and I didn’t see it in time to brake. Anywho, I definitely wear the wrist plates and elbow pads now. Knee pads at higher speeds. I also invested in some lighting although I pretty much only ride in places I know have smooth surfaces now. The one wheel scares me because a lot of the falls are due to it (mis?)interpreting a body movement as a braking signal and ejects the rider forward.

Ouch, that sucks, good luck in your recovery.

The issue with the One Wheel is that it balances nose to tail by accelerating or decelerating, but it has a finite amount of power available. Once you’re going close to the top speed it can’t accelerate anymore (or you’re maxing out the acceleration) it can no longer balance to the nose side and the front drops.

There’s “pushback” to warn you, people try to mitigate it with extra little wheels (“fangs”), but it’s really seems like it’s just an inherent issue.

Thanks! Doing ok, just wish I wore my PPE from the beginning lol!! I really underestimated the speeds. I have rode regular skateboards a ton so guess I was cocky.

Interesting tidbit about the onewheel. I always thought it was a sensor/user issue but what you describe does sound inherent with the design. I'd think at some point you could just level it out and maintain speed, or leaning in further just doesn't do anything other than alter your pitch. What your describing is that constant speed (0 acceleration) isn't really a possibility which sounds odd.

It's not like it goes from 10mph to 15mph to 5mph constantly or anything. Accelerating immediately causes the board to tilt back to your neutral angle and the controller lowers the output after a few milliseconds.

You can generally keep going at whatever speed you want to go but there are probably tiny fluctuations.

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.

Isn't that the same problem solved by treads on tanks?

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.

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.

You could have two flywheels to balance the forces.

I'm not sure conservation of angular momentum works the way you're describing (as in their moments would fully cancel). That means that they also wouldn't act to improve stopping force/torque.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/79699/dynamics-o...

I was thinking maybe just skids or small wheels in front. There's a dual problem of sliding up the front of the wheel when accelerating hard that would also be nice to solve a similar way, though not as critical.

This guy rocks the mono wheel in parades! https://instagram.com/hunter_howell_?utm_medium=copy_link

the south park vehicle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entity_(South_Park)

I love the impracticality of leaning over to see where you’re going

Seems like a problem that could be solved with cameras today.

Like sailing.

For more monowheels, check out Douglas Self's Museum of Transport page (a wonderful old-days-of-the-internet style collection of obscure info). Here's the section on monowheels: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/motorwhl/motorw...

There is (was?) an art car at burning man that uses this principle. It was the first mutant vehicle I ever laid eyes on.

https://imgur.com/a/Y5Q9Qq7

Those spokes on the "400 mph" monster monowheel would vaporize the pilot, like a giant inverted blender. Engineering safety has come a long way.

Monowheels are really cool and totally impractical.

If I had the space to store one, I'd probably buy one for shits and giggles.

Gerbiling sounds both hilarious and terrifying.

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