On another note I would pay money to see Michael Moore riding one of these in traffic...
Posted on 09/08/2008 5:31:22 AM PDT by Abathar
It’s not often that an incoming college freshman is already starting his own multimillion dollar business. But that’s what’s happening to Ben Gulak. He’s a 19-year-old Canadian who’s just starting at MIT. Gulak’s was inspired by the overwhelming smog he saw on a trip to China two years ago. He thought there should be something better than all the polluting scooters. He spent two years tinkering and came up with a contraption he calls the Uno. It’s an electric vehicle that looks like a cross between a motorcycle and a unicycle.
There are actually two wheels, but they’re side by side, not front and back. And the controls consist of a single on-off switch. You balance by simply sitting upright. You accelerate by leaning forward. Leaning backward activates the brakes. And you turn by simply leaning to the left or right. The computer control system is similar to that of the sidewalk Segway, but this device is designed like a scooter to be ridden on the street. Gulak has already won a number of prizes and gotten funding for his new Cambridge-based business. And he’s planning to balance a double-major in mechanical engineering and business at MIT. Which should help him get people to balance on Unos some day soon.
On another note I would pay money to see Michael Moore riding one of these in traffic...
Brilliant, a 6 car pile up if you sneeze.
LOL!!!
HALF-A-Ping!..............
LOL! Hey, I just came across it and thought it looked interesting, never looked at in that practical of a way.
This young guy is going to be a huge success, whether the vehicle is or not. Good luck to him.
“You accelerate by leaning forward”
Cue America’s Funniest Videos for guys trying to get home from the local watering holes.
Agreed, he is going places.
ROFLMAO — Yeah, somehow this does not look too safe, a high speed Segway. Like small cars, and high speed golf carts, what happens when you hit something — Scrambled eggs.
Looks like it is ‘delicately’ balanced.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should — age old engineer’s saying.
My first thought is that the kid had a heckuva lot more capital to finance his effort than I did coming out of highschool.
I wonder what the range is on one charge, and how convenient/inconvenient is it to recharge?
LOL!!!
But hey, Edison didn’t get the lightbulb the first couple of hundred tries I’ll bet. Brilliant young man.
No kidding! My prototype unicycle was made from recycled Legos! ;)
You probably never had the advantage of key words like “green” and “pollution reduction” and “electric” when giving your sales pitch back then either...
“Brilliant, a 6 car pile up if you sneeze”
I just sprayed my espresso on the screen!
True, he’ll go far and it is a rather rad looking machine.
Scram gravy ain’t wavy.
Not enough details to really comment on his device.
But the kid’s 19 and built this. Big plus in my book.
Double majoring in MechE and business @ MIT isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
Whether this vehicle of his is a boom or a bust, this kid’s someone to watch. You don’t often see smart combined with practical ability to the degree it appears to occur in this young man.
Let's hope that he came up with a different control system!
(Hey! It's still better than going to the airport!)
It also say something about the creativity and ingenuity of Americans (And America)!
North American - He is Canadian, but still close enough for me.
Electricity production pollutes too.
Especially in China. Unless you are near the Three Gorges dam or a couple of nuke plants the rest of the place runs on dirty coal with no regard to scrubbing the exhaust.
OOPS!
Thanks for the correction. I did not notice that he is from Canada but that is close enough for me too.
Well at least he is at a University in the USA and not
somewhere else.
My question to that freshman:
“Why are you even bothering with MIT?”
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I bet that thought has gone through his mind a few times too.
Isn’t this simply a repackaging of the Jeff Bezo’s contraption? What was that contraption called?
Uh, needs forward controls.
That contraption is called Amazon.com.
Dean Kamen's contraption is called a Segway.
Looks like this kid has received loads of funding, based on the tooling he spent on this machine.
It looks ‘unsafe at any speed’.
You acceleration/deceleration are limited by forward/backward lean angle.
A sudden stop would be disastrous along the pitch axis — the weight shifts forward but since the c.g. is directly over the contact patch, and there is no counterbalancing moment arm.
Without coordinated forward/backward leaning, every acceleration is the motorcycle equivalent of a wheelie, and every stop a stoppie.
There’s a reason you don’t see people riding unicycles with brakes.
I own a mold making business, the first thing I looked at was the amount he had in tooling for that, even a prototype.
Someone with very deep pockets is behind him for sure.
I wouldn’t want a squirrel or coon to run out in front of me while driving one of those things.
Wouldn’t work well in Taiwan though, where there are usually the husband, wife, 2 kids and the family dog on the scooter at the same time :-)
Wouldn’t work well in Taiwan though, where there are usually the husband, wife, 2 kids and the family dog on the scooter at the same time :-)
Most of the parts look like re-used motorcycle stuff to me. It wouldn't need much that's unique.
They would have a rickshaw hooked up to that thing before the sun went to noon...
Cordially,
Face-first, most likely.... Anything goes wrong on this dealy, and the rider's face will hit the road first.
Cool invention, but the consequences of even minor failures -- hitting a big pothole, say -- are pretty ghastly to contemplate.
My first thought too. Just to get the parts molded for the body even for a one off would cost more than most people make in 5 years. Then there was the cost of the guts of the machine.
Designing an electric vehicle to reduce pollution is admirable, but adding needless complications isn’t. How is a dangerous unicycle contributing anything positive?
Well, it won't sell well in China. Firstly, many, many of the new middle-class Chinese are starting to buy cars (a real status symbol over there, despite the traffic problems). Secondly, the vast numbers of 125 cc motorcycles found all over the country often carry 3, 4, and even 5 passengers. The Uno can only carry one, and is likely to cost as much as a Chinese-domestic 125cc, if not more.
I’ll pass, looks like a dumb vehicle to the old curmudgeon.
Nice piece of modern art. >:-}
I've got a neighbor who's complained about his electric wheelchair being unable to cope with stairs and steps, as well as having its narrower pivot wheels sink into the mud of his sidewalkless front yard. Besides, kids don't look at powered wheelchairs and say *Wow, that's cool...I wish I had one of those....*
So I'm working on it. Yootoob video *here*.
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