A Jyrobike [1] (formerly known as Gyrobike [2] ) is a bicycle with a special front wheel designed to make balancing easier. It was manufactured and sold by a company of the same name.
The special front wheel contains a rotating flywheel driven by a rechargeable-battery-powered motor that spins at high RPMs like a gyroscope. This flywheel spins significantly faster than the front wheel rolls and acts as a gyroscope, even when the bike is moving slowly, such as when the rider is starting. The flywheel causes the front wheel to respond to a lean by precessing, that is the front wheel turns toward the direction of the lean, which can help provide stability at low speeds, whether riding straight or turning. [3] [4]
Jyrobike technology was intended to help children and adults learning to ride a bicycle, and people lacking confidence in their balance and mobility skills.
The inventors of the technology which the original Gyrowheel was based on were Debbie Sperling, Hannah Murnen, Nathan Sigworth, and Augusta Niles, who conceived and tested the concept between 2004 and 2007 as part of a graduate project at the Thayer School of Engineering. Their invention won the 2006 Break Through Award from Popular Mechanics. [5]
In 2010 Daniella Reichstetter, a fellow Dartmouth student, licensed the technology from the inventors and set up a company based in San Francisco, USA called The Gyrobike Inc. [6] The company launched a working model based on the initial invention, called Gyrowheel, which was a stand-alone front wheel toy accessory that replaced the conventional bicycle front wheel. The company communicated ‘once attached, Gyrowheel transforms a normal bicycle into a Gyrobike’. This message led to confusion [7] because the inventors never engineered a complete Gyrobike bicycle nor did the company sell bicycles or Gyrobikes, but only the front wheel. Gyrowheel was manufactured in 12" and 16" wheel sizes, and was marketed as a toy accessory for children.
Gyrowheel was rated a “Top Toy” of Toy Fair 2010 in New York by industry [8]
In October 2013 UK-based entrepreneur Robert Bodill acquired the intellectual property rights, then raised capital funding and set up Jyrobike Limited in December 2013. The Gyrobike trademark is owned by Jyrobike Limited, which holds global patents for a “system for providing gyroscopic stabilization to a two- wheeled vehicle”, [9] protecting the invention.
In 2014, Jyrobike launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $185,818 from 872 supporters. [10] On November 25, 2014, Team Jyrobike announced a 9-month delay in delivering bikes. [11] That was their last update. As of July, 2019, the jyrobike.com url is no longer active. [12]
A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
The Segway is a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter invented by Dean Kamen and brought to market in 2001 as the Segway HT, subsequently as the Segway PT, and manufactured by Segway Inc. HT is an initialism for "human transporter" and PT for "personal transporter."
A gyroscope is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotation is free to assume any orientation by itself. When rotating, the orientation of this axis is unaffected by tilting or rotation of the mounting, according to the conservation of angular momentum.
An electric unicycle is a self-balancing personal transporter with a single wheel. The rider controls speed by leaning forwards or backwards, and steers by twisting or tilting the unit side to side. The self-balancing mechanism uses accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a magnetometer. In 2020, suspension models were introduced by three major manufacturers Begode, Kingsong and Inmotion.
Elmer Ambrose Sperry Sr. was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous for construction, two years after Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe, of the gyrocompass and as founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. He was known as the "father of modern navigation technology".
A gyrocar is a two-wheeled automobile. The difference between a bicycle or motorcycle and a gyrocar is that in a bike, dynamic balance is provided by the rider, and in some cases by the geometry and mass distribution of the bike itself, and the gyroscopic effects from the wheels. Steering a motorcycle is done by precessing the front wheel. In a gyrocar, balance was provided by one or more gyroscopes, and in one example, connected to two pendulums by a rack and pinion.
Vehicles that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels arranged consecutively, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German draisine dating back to 1817. The term bicycle was coined in France in the 1860s, and the descriptive title "penny farthing", used to describe an "ordinary bicycle", is a 19th-century term.
Countersteering is used by single-track vehicle operators, such as cyclists and motorcyclists, to initiate a turn toward a given direction by momentarily steering counter to the desired direction. To negotiate a turn successfully, the combined center of mass of the rider and the single-track vehicle must first be leaned in the direction of the turn, and steering briefly in the opposite direction causes that lean. The rider's action of countersteering is sometimes referred to as "giving a steering command".
A monowheel, or uniwheel, is a one-wheeled single-track vehicle similar to a unicycle.
A kickstand is a device on a bicycle or motorcycle that allows the bike to be kept upright without leaning against another object or the aid of a person. A kickstand is usually a piece of metal that flips down from the frame and makes contact with the ground. It is generally located in the middle of the bike or towards the rear. Some touring bicycles have two: one at the rear, and a second in the front.
Ship stabilizers are fins or rotors mounted beneath the waterline and emerging laterally from the hull to reduce a ship's roll due to wind or waves. Active fins are controlled by a gyroscopic control system. When the gyroscope senses the ship roll, it changes the fins' angle of attack to exert force to counteract the roll. Fixed fins and bilge keels do not move; they reduce roll by hydrodynamic drag exerted when the ship rolls. Stabilizers are mostly used on ocean-going ships.
The gyro monorail, gyroscopic monorail, gyro-stabilized monorail, or gyrocar are terms for a single rail land vehicle that uses the gyroscopic action of a spinning wheel to overcome the inherent instability of balancing on top of a single rail.
Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics is the science of the motion of bicycles and motorcycles and their components, due to the forces acting on them. Dynamics falls under a branch of physics known as classical mechanics. Bike motions of interest include balancing, steering, braking, accelerating, suspension activation, and vibration. The study of these motions began in the late 19th century and continues today.
Xtracycle is the name of a company and the name commonly used for the variety of load-carrying bicycle, a longtail or a longbike, that results from use of the company's products: the FreeRadical kit, complete long-frame bicycles and associated accessories. Web forums and blogs often use the shorthand Xtrabike, Xtra, or simply X to refer to either the FreeRadical extension or the entire extended bicycle. An Xtracycle may be constructed by modifying an existing bicycle with a Free Radical extension, or by custom-building an extended-tail bicycle frame.
Ship stabilizing gyroscopes are a technology developed in the 19th century and early 20th century and used to stabilize roll motions in ocean-going ships. It lost favor in this application to hydrodynamic roll stabilizer fins because of reduced cost and weight. However, since the 1990s, there is renewed interest in the device for low-speed roll stabilization of vessels. Unlike traditional fins, the gyroscope does not rely on the forward speed of the ship to generate a roll stabilizing moment and therefore can stabilize motor yachts while at anchor. However, the latest generation of "zero speed" fins stabilizers can stabilize yachts while at anchor thanks to their eccentricity with respect of the shaft.
The Uno is a novel self-balancing electric motorcycle using two wheels side by side. The Uno III adds a third wheel that allows it to transform into a tricycle.
A two-mass-skate bicycle (TMS) is a theoretical model created by a team of researchers at Cornell University, University of Wisconsin-Stout, and Delft University of Technology to show that it is neither sufficient nor necessary for a bike to have gyroscopic effects or positive trail to be self-stable. The two-mass and skates aspects of the model were chosen to eliminate design parameters so that the nine that remain, the locations of the masses and the steering geometry, could be more easily analyzed. Instead of full inertia tensors, the total mass of the bike is reduced to just two point masses, one attached to the rear frame and one attached to the front fork. Instead of rotating wheels, the non-holonomic ground contacts are provided by small-radius skates.
Lit Motors Inc. is a San Francisco-based company that designed conceptual two-wheeled vehicles, including a fully electric, gyroscopically stabilized vehicle.
Daniel Wood is an American inventor and entrepreneur, best known for creating the first commercially available self-balancing unicycle. He is currently the founder and CEO of Focus Designs. He is also the Director of Control Systems at Future Motion as well as an advisory council member at RYNO Motors.
Shane Chen is a Chinese-American inventor and entrepreneur based in Camas, WA USA. He is best known for inventing the self-balancing hoverboard.