The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

The Uno – Parallel Wheel Electric Motorcycle

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The Uno - parallel wheel electric motorcycle

The Uno - parallel wheel electric motorcycle18-year-old Canadian, Ben J. Poss Gulak, has always done a lot of tinkering, model trains, rockets, that sort of thing, but the Uno, is something else entirely. The Uno, is a parallel wheel, electric motorcycle that operates like a Segway, lean forward to go forward, lean backwards to go in reverse. Ben unveiled his creation at the 2008 National Motorcycle Show in Toronto, where he was surrounded by the usual V-twin crowd, in fact his booth was right next to Russ Mitchell of Exile Cycles, but he managed to get a lot of attention, anyway.

Ben started his design with hand sketches and then moved to Google SketchUp. A Solidworks salesman tried to sell him a copy of the CAD software but Ben said it was more than he could afford. After he showed the salesman what he was doing, a copy of Solidworks showed up the next day. Cool.

The frame was adapted from a Yamaha R1, the body is custom built from foam which was eventually used for a fiberglass mold. He got some help with the gyro setup from robotics and gyro expert Trevor Blackwell in California. The Uno has 2 gyros, one for the forward and reverse movement, the other for turning. Once those were sorted out the Uno was in operation.

If this is the sort of thing Ben is building at 18, I can only imagine what we’ll see in the future. Very well done, Ben!

Links and photo below:

The Uno - parallel wheel electric motorcycle

Link: The Uno via MotorcycleMojo via Make

Comments

  2. never mind the highway, how about balancing in downtown traffic? great stuff! I gotta stop watchin’ tv.

  3. cool! I’ve seen concept CAD drawings of this nature, but it took an 18 year old to get it built? well, he IS a canadian… 😉

    …while I’m flag waving, messing around on the net today I spotted a zeel desigs bike I’ve never seen before. this has to take the cake for the most odd concepts stuffed into a bike yet…hubless wheels, single sided front and rear, cvt tranny…

    http://www.zeeldesign.com/Images.asp?IdSection=1&Page=2

    also without hubless wheels…nice chain inside the swingarm concept!

    http://www.zeeldesign.com/Images.asp?Id=229

  4. I think that is very cool. Concept is cool as hell… Even if it has ugly bat style wings on the bottom edge of the fairing. Bret, good job kiddo!

    Gotta say though, some of the comments on the Makezine site show the maturity level of *some* of the readers. And that isn’t a good thing.

    Again, good job Bret. (just change the fairing a bit)

    Eric

  5. wonder how much one of these things cost? i think it’d be awesome to see them flying down the road. finally, a compelling use of the Segway technology!

  8. JB,

    Technically, it does nothing BUT wheelies.

    My guess is that as a pure electric, the speed and range of this bike would be very limited given its size. Still, some careful design and a larger frame could stuff a gas motor and generator in there to give it useful performance. The greatest difficulty a design like this would have is hard braking.

  9. It is a great concept and build out but there is no chance I’d ever ride that thing in traffic. Add some flamethrowers and it’d be perfect for Burning Man!

  10. It is electric, there are alot of DIY segway projects around the web, besides the parallel wheel style, I’ve seen a unicycle version and a skateboard version that had the wheels in the center of the board.

  11. This is simply amazing. I thought (before reading the underlying articles) that it was a simply (hah) a cooly repurposed segway. But no, it’s a 120lb completly custom built machine.
    I can’t imagine but that I would be slackjawed if one of these pulled up beside me…way to go, young man!

  13. On second thought, this arrangement might actually be quite rideable if it had wheelie bars front and back. The front wheelie bar would prevent nosing over if the brakes locked. To panic brake, slam the tail down on the rear “oh s**t!” bar and hold on.

  14. As neat and cool as the unicycle is, I do have to wonder- why?

    I understand the idea of doing so for the challenge, or for the fun. I don’t see any advantages over a normal motorcycle, so long term it’s likely to be a looser. Maybe there will be some secondary knowledge that is gleaned during the R&D of he various unicycles that can be applied to 2 wheelers.

  15. Great work! This kind of stuff needs to be done just for the hell of it because it really must be fun to get this kind of vehicle working.
    Ben, please look into building a tilting version!

  17. This marvelous example of independent design and production serves to proove my theory:

    Its impossible to look cool on a unicycle.

  19. There are no brakes, it works like a segway. You lean forward to go forward, lean back to stop. I doubt that it goes much faster than 10 to 12 mph. You won’t see one at the next redlight anytime soon.

  21. you can stop pretty hard on a conventional motorcycle doing a “stoppie” can’t you? Now imagine a computer doing all the balancing math a few thousand times per second. I don’t see why it can’t be done; as long as you remember to lean back when you first hit the brakes.

    -todd

  22. Concept was taken from the animation “KURAU phantom memory”. Animation was released in 2004.

  23. I read an article about this in Popular Science and there it said that the Uno could go 60mph but hadnt been tested. Ben commented saying he had only gone very short distances before the circuitry had caught fire. So there are still kinks and it will be some time. I am interested to see how much to will cost

  24. one last thing is that it is 100% electric and that he decided to do this because he was in Japan and saw how bad the smog is.

  25. Still no video, yeah a 100% electric piece of crap. I can walk faster then 25 km/h.

    That said, if you mounted the foot peg assembaly the other way around and added two wheels, a braking system and lights that worked. You could sell them to people not to steady for a two wheeled scooter or bike.

    I guess it would be for that X-treme senior who hasn’t already gone to the 4 wheeled electric scooter with the basket.lol
    .

  26. Ben,

    Utterly mind-blowing. Love it, love it, love it. I’m nearly 50, have never driven a motorcycle and I want a Uno! And it’s electric, how cool is that. I can’t wait to see what other solutions you’ll come up with. (Think disabled citizens.)