I've been fascinated with monowheels probably since I saw one of Kerry McLean's inventions,
probably on the Discovery Channel. It seems a great idea until you get
to reading about the gerbiling effect - essentially the possibility of
rotating completely over under hard braking or acceleration. And the
monowheel's not much of a new concept, either, with designs going back
to 1904 for motorized versions and 1869 for human-powered versions.
Douglas Self has collected
an impressive amount of information about monowheels through the years.
Yet the anti-gerbiling methods that some of the monowheels mentioned on
that site take seem rather insufficient, until you get to Jake Lyall's RIOT Wheel,
which puts the driver in front of the wheel and uses a counterweight
inside the wheel to keep the driver in an upright position. He plans an
electric-powered version in the future to take advantage of the weight
of the batteries.
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Re: Monowheel Madness
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