Over the years we have featured a number of weird and wonderful bike creations, from working Tron bike replicas to this self-balancing spherical drive electric bike, currently being built.
Rather than wheels the bike is equipped with spheres and is currently under development by a student team from the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering at San Jose State University. Watch the video after the jump to see it in more detail.
The design of the bike uses a spherical drive solution, being friction-driven by three off-center rotors, and should therorically provide the bike with omnidirectional manoeuvrability. The spheres are constructed from carbon fiber and fiberglass with an industrial rubber coating for grip. The development team explains:
“The spherical drive system idea is unlike any other vehicle that can be seen on the road today. Despite having seen spherically driven vehicles in futuristic movies such as IRobot, there has not been a huge push into the realm of the sphere. We believe that the versatility of the sphere drive can give us a whole new degree of freedom and safety that we have yet to discover.”
A prototype is currently being built and will be ready to view before the end of this year the team hopes. For more information on the project jump over to the spherical drive website, which also contains plenty of images and videos.
Source: Oh Gizmo : DamnGeeky : Spherical Drive
Filed Under: Concepts & Design