22 October 2009 - 10:00
Honda's bumskate
Honda might be doing its bit for the planet’s environment with all the fuel cells and hybrids, but it’s also contributing to the world’s obesity epidemic with the U3-X. You’ll never have to shuffle round your office again with this.
The U3-X, a glorified electric unicycle, is a development concept from Honda that’s trying to solve urban mobility problems, and might one day be used to make motorbikes safer because they won’t tip over.
Very worthy stuff, but frankly what’s more important is that it’s great to ride.
As you approach it - warily - it’s standing upright all of its own accord courtesy of the internal gyroscope. It twitches slightly as the gyroscope constantly adjusts, but the movement makes it almost life-like.
Stand with your back to it, and simply sit down. Then pick your feet up and put them on the pegs - which takes a leap of faith as it feels like you might topple over. But once you’ve made it, the U3-X is surprisingly easy to ride: you just lean the way you want it to go.
The trick is to make only very slight movements – an imperceptible lean will make it move really smoothly, and it’s amazing how accurately you can place it, either side-to-side or front to back.
At the moment, you can’t carve a curve round a corner like on a motorbike – the U3-X only crabs in a straight line – but a simple software change will fix that on future versions.
Yet the wheel is still really very clever. There’s a large one that takes care of the forward and back movement, like on a regular unicycle, created from a ring of smaller wheels that do the strafing sideways stuff. Imagine threading lots of donuts around a plastic hula-hoop and… oh, just watch the video…
Don’t think you’ll look cool on this though. Not a single person who’s ridden it has looked natural or stylish.
But well done Honda nonetheless. It’s created yet another device to save us time and effort - fat camps the world over will be disappointed.
Piers Ward
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If they won't use the wheel tech for their bikes, I can see this being further developed into a fancy lazy office chair. A bigger seat, a backrest and voilà, you just have to lean towards the cabinet you want to reach instead of pushing off with your feet. After activating it by a pedal or something of course, otherwise your chair will start rolling whenever you lean back...
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There is no way I would ride that thing without a helmet..
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Its a rolling pancake.
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As a technical exercise, it's fantastic. But look what it does to your posture, man! Will it catch on in Tokyo where everyone is in a hurry at all times and everything is on time? Nissan GT-R vs unicycle stool.
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Round, balanced, beautifully shaped, and much more attractive than the competition. Of course I'm talking about the hips of the rider in white bottoms.
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What Honda has made is a conversation piece for a house party and where the person that falls off has to take another shot. (Beer game)
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Since Brabus got their hands on the Tesla, all tuning companies should start making tuned electric vehicles. How about a Honda Bumskate Type-R Mugen, featuring a top speed of 30mph, some awesome body kit, a limited slip diff, a speaker to produce a loud v8 noise, and some sort of handlebars so that I have something aside from my ass to hold on to. This way, it can rival the Peel P50. Until that comes out, the only rival to the Bumskate is Human Legs. I think Human Legs is better because its free, more convenient and compact, has a higher top speed, longer range, and is somewhat healthier.
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Fine for the ladies, but guys, do you want your legs to be *that* close together? Also, having the footpegs in front of your knees would make it much easier to abort when the computer flips its beans and aims you at a line of high-speed traffic.
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@tohafat: what is a unicycle going to do with a ltd slip diff?
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you would only be able to drive it on smooth surfaces
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Open Car Bar
BlackStigLives commented on this article
22 October 2009
All I saw was the smokin hot Japanese girl on the right...damn.
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