DailyDirt: Personal Mobility Solutions That Solve Non-Problems Look Cool

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jul 9th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The Segway never really lived up to its hype, but it does serve a practical purpose as a means of transportation -- and it's a bit more convenient than a bike in some ways. (I haven't been a fan of larger versions of the Segway (GM's PUMA) because some things just don't scale well. However, I'm not against tinkering with new transportation solutions to try to come up with cool new ways to get around.) If you like transportation gadgets, here are just a few cool-looking projects that offer some extreme maneuverability.

The RYNO is a motorized unicycle that behaves like a Segway (with one less wheel). It has a top speed of 10 mph, but it doesn't quite look as dorky as a Segway. [url]
If being able to turn on a dime is your goal, then an omnidirectional bike with two spheres for wheels might be the gadget for you. The Spherical Drive System is only a prototype, but it literally puts a new spin on the wheel. (This bike might actually look cooler if it had a third sphere...) [url]
Honda has developed its own unicycle called the UNI-CUB personal mobility device. It has a cumbersome name, but it sports an omnidirectional driving wheel system (aka Honda Omni Traction Drive System) and looks fairly compact and maneuverable for indoor use. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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Filed Under: bike, omnidirectional, personal mobility, puma, ryno, segway, spherical drive system, transportation, uni-cub, unicycle
Companies: gm, honda

4 Comments

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Gracey (profile), 9 Jul 2014 @ 6:11pm

eh ... I think the Ryno looks dorky (as dorky as the segway); the Uni-cub sort of looks like a giant baby scale. Not cool either (but perhaps useful).

Best of the three is bike.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2014 @ 6:29pm

People keep saying that the segway is a fluke, but if you look at the adoption of the bicycle you can see that it took a long time like 30 years to catch on. In some places there were brief bicycle crazes lasting 10 years, then people would give up bikes and they would disappear from the streets until they caught on again. It took a lot of years of innovation before the bicycle finally caught on and stuck.

Give segway another 20 years and we'll see what happens.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2014 @ 4:34am

The UNI-CUB doesn't look like much fun when drunk, compared to the Ryno which probably has a greater coolness factor when the rider is slightly happy.
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ken, 9 Sep 2014 @ 4:47am

Hello Michael, The transportation gadgets projects that you have shared is looking interesting. I really like the third one.
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