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...