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Taking their inspiration from the spherical wheeled Audi RSQ concept seen in the Will Smith film, I, Robot, a group of students at the Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering at San Jose State University have created a similar concept, but with just two wheels.
Besides an eco-friendly electric drivetrain, the bike’s spherical drive system is promised to be safer than a traditional motorcycle since the front wheel can’t suddenly turn sideways and jackknife, leading to a crash. And those giant spherical wheels — made from carbon fibre and fibreglass covered in industrial rubber — make maneuvering and parking an absolute breeze since the bike can move sideways just as easily as it can move forwards and back. The students hope to have the concept fully assembled and running by the end of the year, but whether or not such a design would ever go into production remains to be seen. And while it’s great they’re remaking the car from I, Robot, couldn’t they have fixated on The Fifth Element instead? I want my flying taxi!
[Spherical Drive System via OhGizmo! via Damn Geeky]
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Didn’t Batman have one like this in The Dark Knight (when the car was destroyed)
No, it just had really fat tyres. The sideways motion was done by the whole front and rear sections rotating, which probably wouldn’t be physically possible in real life. But it looked really cool!
Yes, but do the balls have to be that big?
“Ooooo matron!”
Presumably, this doesn’t run on a central axis through the ball and it’s powered by rollers or some such against the wheel. I reckon changing the course of a rolling ball will be far more inefficient than turning a wheel, so the steering isn’t going to work very well. There’s probably a reason people have used wheels instead of balls for thousands of years.
Like the cars in Irobot!
Dammit, already mentioned in the article
Does it come in Black?
Surely you’d have to have some system so that tyre or ball wear was even across the entire ball? Otherwise you’d end up with grooves worn into it.
I think that is the least of this bikes problems..