Gyrobike's Gyrowheel stabilizes a kid's first bike without the training wheels
By Paul Miller 
posted Oct 3rd 2009 6:53PM
posted Oct 3rd 2009 6:53PM
[Via Bike Commuters]
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hax
how will this help a child learn balance? as soon as you take the wheel off, won't the poor kid just fall over since he's never learned that the key to riding is balancing himself?
another tech solution for a nonexistent problem.
@Sam
Thats the same as training wheels, but those work. Its the same principle
@sam
"The idea is that you get the kid started on a high stability setting, and step them down until they're not using the gyro at all."
It's like weaning somebody off of something, start with the highest support, and then gradually reduce the support until they are able to do it by themselves.
What happens if you try to turn?
I seem to remember something about gyros and precession (sp?).
Will there be a remote control switch that lets you turn the gyro off as the kid is flying down a hill?
It would be helpful if you could rent one. According to their website, it only takes an hour to learn from it. After that you wouldn't need it anymore.
This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Training wheels, if I remember correctly, work fine.
Actually, training wheels do not work fine.
Training wheels don't let you lean into turns, since they keep the bike up straight. In fact, if you try to turn too quickly with training wheels on, they will make you fall over. When this happens to a kid trying to learn to ride, it increases their fear of riding quickly enough to be stable. The training wheels let them ride slowly (as if on a tricycle), and this kind of riding doesn't help teach how to control balance.
Like someone else said below, the best way to learn is probably to start with a glider bike (a push bike with no pedals & crank). The kid uses his feet to keep stability at first, and as they try to go faster and faster they have to keep their feet off the ground more and more, learning how to balance as they do so.
You can, without too much difficulty, convert any bike into a push bike. It needs to be a bit undersized (so the child can ride with his feet on the ground). Minimally, you just need to remove the pedals (you can tape the crank into a fixed, out-of-the-way position). Or you can go all the way and remove the crank and the chain. Once the child has learned to balance, just put the parts back, raise the seat a bit, and let them fly!
CityZen,
I'm sorry you found training wheels hard to master. I guess that once these things are available you'll finally be able to learn how to ride a bike. Me, I learned in about an hour with a set of training wheels.
Actually CityZen is right. Ideally a child would start on a bike with no pedals, so that they achieve forward motion by walking and eventually kicking (like on a skate board). In this fashion they would concentrate on balance as a key skill before making the next step of learning the co-ordination required to pedal as well.
As a related note, BMW has the perfect kids bike where the entire crankset can easily be removed until the child is ready for that next step.
I, for one, didn't learn on training wheels. My parents bought me a kid size Murray bike and I learned by going down the hill. I ran into bushes and twice into our mailbox, but I got into it pretty quick.
I learnt on the huge Raleigh cycles which I think was taller than me.
I would put on leg through the frame and pedal. All the kids on the neighborhood learnt that way, we were too short to sit on the seat or even on the bar and pedal.(only the rich kids had small cycles with training wheels).
What was amazing that we started learning riding by one hand only. We had to grab the seat with other hand to stop us from falling off cause we were in a very precarious position.
You should try and imagine it. I think I should find some kid who can do that now and put it on youtube it will become a famous video :-P
It all depends on confidence, if you want to learn the cycle(and your parents are not bothered much cause they too learned on their own) you will do anything. You wont need the gyro or training wheels.
Pimp dat ride!
i heard you like wheels, so we put a wheel in your wheel so you can wheel while you wheel?
:/
Are machines going to take over EVERY aspect of parenting?
Eventually they'll even take over all the outsourced jobs.
Only missing a robot that spanks your children for you.
I bet there was someone just like you back when they put the actual training wheels on the bike. Don't worry, we lived through that crisis.
@Monkey with glasses
Those electric shock dog collars work great for that. Placed on an ordinary pants belt at the small of little Bobbies back, and he'll only mouth off once.
@ Monkey with glasses
I wish I had a robot that spanks me!
Hey, that's neat. You don't even need a kid.
Damn, I wish I was a kid these days... with all their fancy nintendo Xstation 360s, robotic toy pets, iphones, and now bikes that ride themselves... We got jipped!
Crap gadget. Just fall off and start again like we all did, never used training wheels.
So you can still remember learning to ride a bike? Don't brag about not needing training wheels when you are 14.
Isn't a good thing to let your kid fall of their bike every now and then?
I recall my experiences being similar in terror levels to those of Calvin..
my goal is to dismantle this bicycle and mail every piece to a different country so it can never be rebuilt.
@Nathan
I still remember when I learned how to ride a bike and I'm 35.
damn
It wont work look at the vid it keeps on falling at the end.
Precession at work, my friend.
Hah! No parents so far, based on the comments... I actually like the idea! $100 sounds reasonable, IF the device is indeed capable of doing what is stated in the description...
Does this mean that, with the gyro on the VERY high setting, the kids can only go straight?
I bet there's a lot of parents out there that would invest in something to make their children go straight!
@meikaat - I can't decide if that's a gay joke or not...
100$? hey that's a bit too much. Any kid can learn to ride after a few days of training. At least they learn the value of learning something instead of being baby spooned experience.
give a kid 100 bucks he will learn in a second...
Man, I wish they had something like this for my car, so my burnout won't look like this...
http://www.break.com/index/dodge-srt-10-burnout-and-roll-over-crash.html
What's next? A machine that assists and teaches kids how to walk? At this rate, we're creating an incapable future generation..
Cmon, the only way you learn to ride a bike is by falling off and getting scratches and bruises. That's why the helmet was invented.
I learned to ride a bike on training wheels, and I don't see how this is any different. I'm perfectly capable of riding a bike now, and I only skinned my knees a couple times.
that way, kids might never learn how to ride bikes skillfully. like riding without hands and being able to make turns.
Yes, because when you're three or four years old, falling off a bike and skinning your knees really endears you to the machine
i'm sorry to the rest of the silly commenters here, but i work at a toy store, and this idea sounds like seven times more efficient than the lame training wheels that i used as a kid. you could stop and stay stopped, but this just increases stability , so the wheel is more like riding a bike. it'll let them progress to not using it at all faster, and the wheel itself looks nice. i know a lot of parents who would be willing to buy this thing. ya'll are just too pessimistic.
Training wheels are $10 and don't require batteries. They work every bit as well as this...probably better.
Mousetrap reinvention fail.
Training wheels, when set properly, give children a chance to properly learn to ride a bike. This device does the balancing for them and the occasional scraped knee is just part of childhood. Honestly, we are sterilizing childhood way too much.
Training wheels are both a physical and psychological crutch. For some kids, it's unnerving to suddenly have it removed. This device can act as a crutch that can be tuned physically, but still have a full psychological effect.
If gradually lowered, at the final stages, the wheel becomes a placebo.
Some kids just have a lower self-esteem - this could be a great morale booster and help them get into activities that other kids are doing.
Or it could lower their self esteem knowing that they needed a $100 piece of technology to do what other people did with little $10 wheels.
Either way it's a crutch, but when you take the training wheels away from the kid, and they ride the bike without them for the first time, they know they've accomplished something. If you gradually change the settings on this they might not even notice, there's no accomplishment in learning to ride a bike.
ok, so, imagine this... all the other lil kids in the neighborhood are learning how to ride a bike, and they have these lame training wheels. you get this $100 piece of technology and you ride in with no training wheels... all the other little kids will think you are so cool, it wouldn't lower your self esteem at all, it would make you the coolest lil kid in the whole neighborhood. see, you just gotta look at this from a kid's point of view, and being ahead of the other kids is really cool to little kids...
@Joe
I have 6 mousetraps set up at every place I see the mouse, and the it seems to be immune to the smell of peanut butter. Bring on the reinvention!
toddlers riding bikes + Paul Oakenfold = me laughing until I pee
What would happen if you replaced both wheels on a bike with that thing?
The traducer would couple, creating a vortex wav in the space time continuum sending you back in time.
^^ sounds like a nice investment or $200
Without a flux capacitor? How will the child accelerate to 88 MPH? Where will the necessary 1.21 gigawatts come from?
This seems kind of lazy. It won't be long before you see grown up versions of this and then no one would really need to learn how to ride a bike again.
RTFA. You're obviously missing the point. What do you think the stability setting is for, people who want to fall over more?
This actually would be a great for adults who don't know how to ride yet as children tend to more fearless and recover from injuries faster. I know some adults are afraid to learn.
I swear there are 1000 Luddites for every invention.
*Bleep*
You miss the point entirely. People won't really need to learn to ride their bikes when they'll have their gyroscopic wheel to help keep them balanced. They'll just leave it on forever.
I think this is a great idea. I have 4 ssssons that I taught to ride and can say that training wheels don't hack it. You have to be able to ride without them and that's what this does. It gives the kids confidence in their own ability. Daddy can still be there to help them, but the experience of first being able to ride on your own is something I still remember
Wont the spinning wheel, make turning the handlebars really tough? You know, kinda like whne you are holding a wheel on the hub and spinning it?
That would actually work in the riders favor. With steering a bike, it is done almost entirely with leaning. Except for when I am doing complicated maneuvers in traffic, I doubt that my handlebars go more than 5 degrees in either direction.
The common mistake that new riders do is trying to steer more with their handlebars than with their body.
You mean like when you're riding a bike and your wheels are spinning?
when is the large boy version coming out for the alcoholic adult bikers?
i think you can actually get a DUI for biking drunk... in Virginia at least...
Someone needs to make a unicycle with this tech...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225812.400
they obviously haven't done their research.
No, you drew the wrong conclusions. The report says that gyroscopic forces are not *required* for stability, but it also says "Gyroscopic effects seem to add to stability". This product greatly increases the gyroscopic (angular) momentum, so stability is increased as well.
Interesting read.
"they obviously haven't done their research."
Obviously: that's why the wheel doesn't fall off for several seconds. But if they only did, I bet the wheel wouldn't dare stand upright for more than a quarter of a second.
This is an amazing innovation, too bad I also learnt the hard way!
Whether we remember it or not, there was a time when we learned to ride where we just seemed to "get it". This happened when we developed the balance and confidence to start going *fast* enough to take advantage of the gyroscopic, stabilizing influences of wheels turning at speed. It is very difficult to ride a bike slowly (try it!), yet this is our instinct when first learning, largely because we are programmed not to want to dash out our brains. One might argue the benefits to character of struggling and ultimately succeeding in a fondly remembered childhood rite of passage, but in my book a gyroscopic front wheel makes lots of sense (hold out for the larger diameter). It provides the confidence of training wheels without all the bad habits.
On the other hand, I could easily see this fail because of insufficient momentum, battery issues or cost. Why do I suspect they will spend more on marketing than the bike itself?
This tire starts at $100. Training wheels cost $10 and are used for less than 2 months. With that $90 saved you could buy a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist pads, face mask, body armor and a trip to the ice cream shop when they still manage to crash and obliterate themselves.
This idea is like having training wheels on a motorcycle.
Although using this thing as a giant powered gyroscope to do weird tricks might be cool.
Crikey, first story I've ever submitted and it gets put on Engadget's main site!
This is pretty awesome. :-D
That was very subtle.
Whoa, that's sick. I want an adult sized-BMX version... so I could just ride around doing a wheely all day.
Well if that isn't the biggest wait of a government grant I've ever heard of.....
We have a solution for stabilizing a kid's first bike that costs nearly nothing - training wheels.
it's only a matter of time until Harley Davidson makes this standard equipment...
whether its good for kids to use this on their bike or not, i don't know. But, personally, i think its pretty neat how they got a wheel to stabilize itself and not fall (instantly) when set on the ground upright. Its just cool, you guys should look at it that way, instead of being so critical and calling fail fail fail all over the place. its an idea thats going to make money, so essentially, its a good one. don't you wish you invented it? i know i do..
If you are like me and would like your kid to start riding a bike long before they have the ability to ride without training wheels this would be great. My daughter rode a bike with training wheels for at least a year before she could ride without them. They get caught on things and the create a pivot point to launch the kid. I think this will be a resounding success.
for anyone who has a 2+ year old. do *NOT* do training wheels. the teach the opposite of what you should be learning - to lean ON the training wheels.
the way to do it is with a glider bike. FGI. my 3 year old is now riding a bike without training wheels. he is not particularly gifted. just buy them a glider bike at age 2+ - basically as soon as they are comfortable pedaling a trike. after they figure out balance safely on a glider bike, they are ready to incorporate pedaling.
for those too lazy to look it up - a glider bike is a bike without pedals. they scoot along using their legs and learn balance first - safely and at their own speed. as they become more comfortable, they walk/glide. when they are really ready, they take super big steps that transition into full gliding. that is the hardest and most dangerous part of learning to ride a bike. you take the variable of pedaling out of the equation, and let them learn it comfortably and safely at their own speed. once they have the balance, combining it with pedaling is a snap.
I see that you and I were writing similar comments simultaneously, although I thing buying a special bike just for this purpose is unnecessary. I've helped many children (and not a few adults) learn to ride using the "scooting" method; the main impediment is that so many parents insist on buying huge bikes, much too large for their kids, for them to "grow into" -- but on which there's no possible way for the kids' feet to touch the ground. Better to buy used and get the right size if budget is an issue.
Training wheels are a poor way to learn to ride because you don't learn how to turn. The best way is to lower the saddle until the learner's feet touch the ground; remove the pedals if necessary so that the learner can "scoot" the bike, lifting the feet off the ground as becomes comfortable, and still feel that the bike can safely stop at will.
This way the learner can simultaneously grasp that the bike is turned by the rider simply leaning in the direction of the turn, not by sitting up straight and turning the handlebars (which is what's forced by training wheels).
The method of turning learned with training wheels actually has to be unlearned when the training wheels come off.
It seems to me this gyro system may come closer to the correct method of learning than training wheels do, but letting children stay closer to the ground and able to stop with their feet would still let them feel safer and more confident, and not force them to learn braking at the same time that they learn the other basic cycling skills.
This device, like training wheels, is a crutch. I learned to ride a bike in about 20 minutes - by myself. To be fair, I was older than most kids (6) because we had just moved into the city.
My kids both learned at 4 years old. It took an investment of 1 morning of my time to take them with their bikes on a Sunday morning to an empty parking lot. Within 1 hour, they were riding comfortably. By the end of the morning, they also knew the rules of the road, hand signals, and several road safety considerations.
A lot of kids get frustrated at first so you need incentives to make it fun. For both of my kids, I displayed the morning's prizes that they could win on the hood of my car, ending with a cheap but significant trophy for graduating. There was a prize for 10' solo, 100' solo, first 180 turn, etc.. We had a LOT of fun and it only took a morning.
Parents - don't do training wheels or this new gyro gizmo. Stop twittering, put down your bloody iPhone, and invest some time with your kids.
When I got my first bike as a kid, me and my brother, there was no training wheels! I never saw any kids with training wheels back then. For myself I was to afraid to fall and crash, that's what motivated me not to do so and learn how to ride it and it's Banana seat!
These days it seems like a lot of kids have them and they are a crutch. They seem to stay on for quite some time. It just seems like most people are just to LAZY to teach their kids to ride, and instead throw on some wheel and let them be. I see my little Niece (Can't be older then 6-7) out riding her little Dirt bike Motorcycle around having a blast. No Training wheels. Has never had them. The Kid is going to crash on a bike at some point. Hell I'll been thrown over the handlebars before. When your that young, you usually bounce back. Get a few scrapes, run to mom and get fixed up and back off doing whatever you were doing.
I wish I had invented this. I wonder if eventually you could just buy a replacement front wheel to use this on any kid's bike? $100 sounds very reasonable and tells me the rest of the bike must be WalMart-grade. Hey luddites, if this helps get kids away from the TV, then is it such a bad thing?
Centrifugal Farce :)
Defiantly a step up from ye old training wheels. I remember as a kid taking the better part of a year learning how to ride my bike. Training wheels just don't help you learn balance.
Still, $100 is a bit expensive, they'll probably have to drop the price before they get any real market share.
A year? Perhaps you are a simpleton? Have you spent more than 4 months working in retail?
Woo capitalism. Inventing stupid shit that no one really needs just to try and make a buck is what this country was founded on.
Dude your on a blog about what is for the most part superfluously vain technology... and a neat wheel pisses you off. I can't figure out if you're confused or I am.
Ah, my first time w/o training wheels I pedaled furiously downhill past the garage, pinioning mightily against the banana seat of my 3 speed - Top of the World Ma! The end of the property loomed, a dirt road and then a triple row of barbed wire (I still carry a 5 inch scar on my right thigh from that fence, but that's another post) - I panicked! A frantic downshift, and a locking of hand brakes brought me into an out of control tumble into the open arms of a pine tree....
Dirty, bleeding, and covered in tar, I bid an adieu to my training wheels, and emerged, limping, a man in full. With apologies to Tom Wolfe.
The best "learning to ride" trick I've seen is to take a broom handle and duct tape it to the frame in such a way that it sticks up and toward the back to provide a high handle for an adult behind the bike. It also shouldn't interfere with the rider, but there is usually a place to do this on most kids bikes. Then run behind the kid as he/she rides. The broom handle lets you not have to bend over and hold the back of the seat. Now with a comfortable place to hold-on, it's not hard for an adult to jog next to the bike and keep up. Most kids will learn to ride with less than 30 minutes of this.
Looking forward to see funny videos when children accidentally hit dog / grandma / wall because they couldn't turn :)
The above wheel doesn't work as well as training wheels (TW for short). TWs will keep the bike upright at all times, even when the kid start getting scared and fumbles the handlebar. In the video, the wheel only stabilizes laterally, and if the handlebar is turned, the bike still falls over. For a total newbie (kid) to ride a bike with this, you still need close supervision and teaching, unlike with TWs where you can just let the kid ride by himself.
In that case (where supervision is needed), you just may as well use a low-tech device like a push-pole connected to the seat post. It does roughly the same thing, is cheaper, and doesn't need to be plugged in after 3 hours.
KISS.
Get the child a bike that fits first, too many parents get a bike that is way to big thinking they will grow into it. The first bike should be one that allows them to easily reach the ground with both feet (flat footed). Make sure it has HAND brakes, coaster brakes are about the dumbest invention ever, it does more to confuse the new learner than anything else. Then take off the pedals. Let them get the feel for just gliding, and the fact that they can put their feet down to stop. Then concentrate on braking, then turning in circles, then gliding to a stop, when that is under control then put the pedals back on. I have taught many kids to ride, within an hour of their first time on the bike they can usually glide pretty conifidently, some kids get it within a few hours and are pedaling on their own the same afternoon, some take a little longer but always much, much faster than the kids that learn with training wheels.
This is a great idea, buy one for your whole family and past it down. It can become a family heirloom. You can buy one for the whole block and pass it down to your neighbors.
I think it is a great idea. Some kids, like my daughter, have no fear. She was begging to get her training wheels off at 4 years old, and when we took them off, she rode around the driveway and fell for a while, but she kept getting right back on, and had mastered her bike in about 20 minutes. Other kids, like my son, have more fear, and the training wheels are a crutch. He was so afraid of falling that the only way I could get him to ride without the training wheels what to let him ride on the back yard where he would fall on the soft grass. I wish we had started him on the push-bike method. The gyro-wheel just seems like a better idea than training wheels.
i kinda wanna get drunk and bike around the block with this gyro wheel