Ready . . . Steady . . . Go

Gyrobike is reinventing the bicycle wheel . . . well, sort of.  It seems to be a revolutionary way to teach young tots how to ride a bike without the risk of severe falls and injury.  On Gyrobike’s website, the technology of how it works is explained:

Gyrowheel’s inner disk, or flywheel, spins independently within the front wheel of a bicycle, creating a force that stabilizes the bike.

Gyrowheel uses the principle of gyroscopic precession to stabilize the bike and the rider. It “senses” unbalanced biking and re-centers the bike underneath the rider’s weight at the point when tipping starts to occur. It provides high-speed stability at startup speeds, whether riding straight or turning.

The Results

On the road: riders feel more confident, learn to ride more quickly and feel safer.
The spinning flywheel has also proven to be “cool” to “extremely cool.”
In the lab: Gyrowheel has been empirically proven to increase stability of a bike by six to eight times as compared with an unaided bike.

What is Precession? Gyroscopes are spinning wheels that exhibit a special property called precession. When a force is put at the top of a spinning wheel (such as a rider falling on a bicycle), rather than falling, the gyroscope simply turns, or precesses, in the direction of the fall. This occurs on normal bike wheels when the bike is traveling at higher speeds. Hence, it is easier to ride a bicycle once you “get going”. Gyrowheel takes advantage of this property even when the bike is moving slowly. The disk inside Gyrowheel spins independently of the bike wheel. Thus, even when a rider is moving very slowly on the bicycle, the precession of Gyrowheel is still felt. If the rider begins to fall, Gyrowheel precesses under the rider’s weight, restabilizing the bike.

Ghost Testing: To test this effect, we performed what we call ghost testing. We pushed the bike forward without a rider on it to see how long it took to fall over. We found that a bike with Gyrowheel installed remained upright for 10-15 times as long as a bike without Gyrowheel. We were also able to see the precession in the manner in which the bike with Gyrowheel fell. As it began to fall, the precession turned the wheel in the direction of the fall and the bike turned in a large arc before finally falling down due to lack of velocity. This was in contrast to the normal bike, which fell directly over.

Kids’ Gyrowheel will be available for purchase later this year. It’s almost here! In just a few short months, kid-sized Gyrowheels will be available for purchase in 12” and 16” sizes.

For more information, go to the Gyrobike website