“In an odd way, the single wheel is both the Onewheel’s best feature and biggest detraction,” Romine says. From there, the micro-monowheel was ready to roll, so to speak.įor Onewheel riders like Chris Romine, his devotion stems from the unique experience the rideable offers. It soon exploded in popularity (and sometimes just exploded). In 2004, Canadian inventor Trevor Blackwell used that technology to create a self-balancing “ Eunicycle.” Inventor Shane Chen, who also created the electric standing unicycle Solowheel, created the first hoverboard in 2012. Segway, despite all its shortcomings, advanced the cause with its self-balancing technology. Gyroscopes and accelerometers have become easy to source, thanks to smartphones. But if you have a good-quality powertrain and some sort of computation that can help remove some of that steep learning curve, then it makes it easier for these vehicles to take off and for people to be able to use them.”Īs the cost of building rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and electric motors has plummeted, it has become feasible to assemble personal vehicles that are both powerful and compact. “Why did they not take off in the '20s? Because they're really hard to ride. “One-wheels have existed for a long time,” Bruce says. But now, thanks to technological advancements like self-balancing systems and powerful electric motors, the monowheel has gone from a fringe curiosity to a legitimate means of transportation. The notion has woven its way, on its single spinning pie plate, through the public consciousness for over a century. But the concept of the monowheel has persisted through every fad and technological breakthrough. Humans have been designing and riding ridiculous means of transit since the dawn of the machine age. What if, stability be damned, we could travel on just one wheel alone? There had to be a way to optimize the model even further. The resulting form factors-cars, bicycles, tricycles, mopeds-have worked for 200 years, and much longer if you count the horse-drawn carriage among such devices.īut for some, it was never quite enough. Stick a drivetrain in a frame, slap two to four wheels on it, and hop on. For a brief moment in human history, we thought we knew how to make a vehicle.
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