It is safe and
it is stable and obviously dead easy to park.
At ten miles per hour it enters the Segway market window which allows
folks to cruise the sidewalks and bike lanes without causing damage.
It is certainly
an urban device and perhaps superior to the Segway itself. However it is also ideal for handling rough
ground such as weedy pastures and even a little worse. With a little practice this could also make
woodland trails much more accessible. Those
fat tires are carrying a modest load and bunching up over several inches should
be practical. Certainly anyplace able to
handle a mountain bike works just fine.
I think this is
a serious winner. It also nicely solves
the commute to the nearby strip mall from your home rather conveniently and a
pack and a saddle bag can provide load carrying. The car will not be much faster either particularly
after skipping the parking.
This One-Wheeled
Electric Motorcycle Actually Feels … Safe
BY TIM MOYNIHAN
01.23.14
12:38 PM
It takes a special kind of magic to make an electric
one-wheeled motorcycle not terrifying to ride, andRyno Motors has pulled it off. The
microcycle, which has a single 25-inch motorcycle tire and reaches speeds up to
10 mph, uses a combination of gyroscope sensors and accelerometers to balance
itself. That, combined with a strategic weight distribution and an intuitive
acceleration and braking method, makes this motorized unicycle from the future
actually feel … safe.
It’s a magnet for attention, too. Plenty of people
at the WIRED New York office stopped by to check it out. Many of them wanted to
ride it — in no small part because it looks and feels like something Syd Mead
dreamed up. What inspired the vehicle is
more cute than futuristic though.
“My daughter drew a sketch of a one-wheel motorcycle
she saw in a video game and asked me to build it,” says Ryno CEO Chris
Hoffmann. “She was 13 years old.”
What started out as a hobby seven years ago morphed
into a business four and a half years later as the price of gyro sensors
approached the $10 mark. The Portland, Ore.-based company will startshipping
pre-orders of the Ryno this April.
Rather than use a hand-throttle like a motorcycle,
you juice the Ryno simply by leaning forward as you would on a Segway. Leaning
forward on the handlebars forces the sensor-balanced wheel to adjust its
position for balance, which propels you forward. Braking is as easy as leaning
back, but there’s also a hand brake if you’d rather slow down that way.
The Ryno is able to handle inclines up to a
20-percent grade, so it’s largely San Francisco-friendly. It also takes about
six hours to charge up fully using a 12-volt DC charger. That gives it a range
of about 10 miles or an hour per charge at top speed. Real-world usage —
stopping, starting, and going more slowly — will probably yield quite a bit
more than that. The removable, rechargeable
batteries also power the Ryno’s LED headlights and light-up dash
display.
It’s hard to describe what it feels like to ride the
Ryno, but the main takeaway is it’s much easier and safer than it seems. The
vehicle really does balance itself without a hitch, and getting the hang of
leaning forward and backward to accelerate and decelerate takes only a few
seconds.
Indeed, The self-balancing skills of the Ryno are
impressive to the point of being miraculous. With the vehicle turned on and no
one seated on it, Hoffmann pushed down as hard as he could on the handlebars
while standing in front of it. It didn’t even budge on its single wheel as the
gyro and motion sensors kicked in. Of course you can still tip it over from
side to side fairly easily, but obviously your legs are there for
stabilization.
A lot of what feels safe about riding the Ryno has
to do with weight distribution. The entire vehicle weighs 160 pounds, with the
wheel-and-motor portion accounting for most of that (140 pounds). That makes it
feel extremely bottom-heavy and rooted to the ground. It also makes it easier
to pick up. The lightweight seat and frame, which are made from a combination
of CNC tube benders and 3D-printed parts, rocks back and forth on the wheelbase
and absorbs shock.
How do you park a 160-pound unicycle? That’s another
clever aspect of the Ryno’s design. The front of the vehicle’s frame comes
together in a rubber-footed bar. Simply tipping the vehicle forward rests it on
that bar like an oversized kickstand. Little foot pegs fold out from the sides
of the tire; you can flip them down if you want to use them or lock them upward
if you want to ride free-footed.
Like a Segway, the Ryno should be fine to use on
sidewalks and bike lanes, but those regulations varyfrom
state to state and city to city. In New York City, for example, a security
guard asked us to stop riding the Ryno on an empty sidewalk. That’s probably
because the vehicle looks a lot heavier and faster than it actually is.
To help with the Ryno’s adoption as a mainstream
personal transportation vehicle, the company has enlisted an independent legal
counsel to go from city to city to lobby for permission to ride it on walkways.
“Segway
defined this space called personal mobility,” says Ryno’s Hoffmann. “These
products are now considered OK anywhere a pedestrian can walk.”
In a lot of ways, the Ryno and the Segway are very
similar vehicles — both have top speeds of less than 12 mph and a much smaller
footprint than your average bicycle. That should help the Ryno’s quest for
pedestrian-like treatment. According to Hoffmann, occupations such as park police
or mall security guards are also interested in the Ryno: It’s cooler-looking,
and it also offers benefits such as being able to take your hands off the
steering column to nab running Hot Topic shoplifters.
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