Gyrobike's Gyrowheel stabilizes a kid's first bike without the training wheels
By Paul Miller 
posted October 3rd 2009 6:53PM
posted October 3rd 2009 6:53PM
[Via Bike Commuters]
posted October 3rd 2009 6:53PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
i needed this back in the early 90's damnit. my ego was all bruised up when i fell in front of cool kids. im pretty much scared to this day :(
Bicycles stay up because of the lateral vectors of force created from drag on the rear wheel. This article is a little bit misleading to people because it suggests the "old wives tale" that bicycles stay up from the centrifugal force of the spinning wheel.... wrong!
Hahahaha!! This is awesome...the concept was invented by a bunch of students from Dartmouth College in an engineering class. And after taking the same class and seeing them push this as an example of what you can do in the class (which is true, although probably less than 1% of all the projects actually find commercial success), I had doubts about how good this thing actually was. But to my surprise I saw it on ENGADGET...wow, I'm amazed at this bike.
The only logical conclusion from the bicycle "AID" I can get is this - WE SHOULD KILL CHILDREN!
1. Learning to walk
2. Learning to bicycle
3. Learning simple social behaviors: "proper" eating, "proper" conversation, "proper" shareing, etc
4. Extremely awekward puberty period
5. The oh-so-terrible high school experience
6. Learning the good-for-nothing knowledge in university
7. Working your ass off just to pay off the roof
8. Finding a mate
9. Making children
a) male - save them from extreme emotional pain
b) female - save them from extreme emotional pain as well as physical
10. Raising those annoying children (which means they start on point 1 and go on from there)
11. As soon as you get used to these children, learn to live without them
12. Develop some painful and physically limiting desease
13. Buy a sailboat that'll sit in the harbor for the rest of your life and never get used
14. Die.
As you can see, all of these steps are difficult, and the only solution is to have some self-balancing robot walk around the maternity section of the hospital, killing all the babies, preventing this chain of difficult and painful events from ever happening.
Speaking of gyros, there are no more bikes after the Segway came out anyway, so why are we bothering with this?
you naughty girl...nice pics
Screw the kid's bike, I say put this thing on a unicycle for adults and now you're talkin'
There seem to be a great many skeptics here who don't seem to like the idea of ANY aids to help kids learn to ride a bike.
This is a fantastic idea. Very clever. More expensive than training wheels, to be sure, but I suspect kids will learn to ride quicker, too. Because training wheels hold the bike upright, the child doesn't really get a good sense of balance. Sure, they pick up the basic bike operation, but they really don't get a good sense of what motor skills they need to demonstrate to keep the bike upright.
This gyro gives them the chance to develop those skills. It's even safer, since there's less risk of tipping over in a turn.
My kids just learned to ride bikes in the past 2 years, but I would have bought this in a flash if it had been available.
I don't consider myself an expert on teaching kids to ride, but know a thing or two.
We have a full islabike garage for our two little ones.
Most people believe that the balance bike is the way to go, no pedal, no crank, just feet and pushing. Personally I think it's about the kids enjoying riding (if they don't you might as well forget it), and both ours enjoyed riding with stabilizers, with the 4 year old riding off as soon as she was ready and I took them off.
As for this aid, I think it's a good idea, better than training wheels, but maybe not as good as the balance bikes.
Slightly off topic, but I bet this would be an excellent modification for a downhill mountain bike. Having a gyro for stability while crusing off-road ot 40mph over boulders would be pretty schweet!
At least the gyro action is not able to keep them PERFECTLY upright at slow speeds!
Anyhow, what is the big deal about training a kid to ride a bicycle?
I do this on a grass lawn, just to ease the possible crash injuries:
A] Dad (or Mom, Uncle, school bully) puts the kid onto the bicycle seat, tells the kid to hold the handlebars and to keep their feet on the pedals (at first, allow no pedaling, no rolling of the bicycle, just keep the feet on the pedals);
B] Dad tips the kid a little to one side, and says: "Don't put your feet down, I have you; just turn the handlebars the same way you are tipping".
C] When the kid turns correctly, balance is manually recovered by Dad who then keeps them upright, holds them there for a second and tells them they did good,
C] "but get ready, here comes another tip, turn whichever way you are tipping".... do 5-10 minutes of this while NOT moving;
D] when they get the idea correct about 20 times in a row, then repeat the same instructions while pushing them around but STILL don't have them pedal at this time;
E] as they grasp the idea of tipping AND rolling, try it all again with pedaling actions (be sure you do not tip them so much that the pedal hits the ground, you mean old thing);
F] When Dad sees that they get it very well WHILE PEDALING, then dad just pushes the kid off from a stop, says "turn the way you are tipping" and then...
G] Dad stands still and watches the kid ride around. Usually less than an hour, some kids get it in 5 minutes.
Yeah, the pedal crashing into the ground while rolling might get them unnerved.... but Dad has to say they need to pay attention so they don't tip that far.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
A neighbor told me that was "how it all worked": "just turn the handlebars to the side your are falling to". How hard is THAT?
When I was learning to ride my bicycle, my training wheels came loose (dad couldn't be bothered with us kids and my 7 year old bicycle assembler skills simply did not grasp 'tighten the axle nuts securely'). The training wheels were an inch off the ground, so I always had tipping action when I was moving. Because of what I was told, I started turning to the side I was tipping, and I was riding around without the training wheels within a few hours (because first one, then the other one fell off)!!
To be sure I had this idea right, a few years later I taught my sister to turn the way she was tipping and now, MANY years later, I taught my nephew with the instructions I entered in paragraph one. Who needs a dad? Who needs training wheels?
Ghost Ride the Whip
You can see a larger prototype version of this wheel here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9rSZ4-l3lo
when you go fast enough BOTH your wheels become gyros (whic is why you can ride with no hands) so.. you turn by leaning DUH!!! this would allow kids to learn properly how to turn and control a bike without being so scared because of the speed factor. I think it's great and WILL be getting one for my 11 year old that I have been trying to teach to ride her bike since she was 4 but the training wheels didn't help because she would turn too sharp and fall over and refuse to get on it for the rest of the season. this should get the fear out.