Balls to it! Inventor Builds Self-Balancing Bike Without Wheels
A British inventor who specialises in self-balancing machines has built a bike that uses balls instead of wheels
If you’re familiar with the inventor and YouTuber James Bruton, you’ll already know he has a penchant for making madcap machines with self-balancing tech and funky wheels.
His latest creation, though, might just be his weirdest to date. He’s created a bike that can balance itself but instead of using his trademark ‘omni-wheel’ design, which features cylinders mounted at an angle along the rim of the ‘wheel’, Bruton has opted for two large spherical wheels… this bike’s basically got massive balls. There, I said it.
Controlling the forward motion of the machine is a motor located at the top and front of each of the spheres, while the balancing element is taken care of by four small motors. Two motors are mounted on the rear of the front ‘wheel’, and two more on the front of the rear ‘wheel’. The motors are mounted with their own omni-wheels which is what moves the spheres and keeps the bike balanced. As the sensors in the bike detect that it's leaning too far one way or the other, the motors can then turn the sphere in the opposite direction, keeping the bike on an even keel. They can also help to rotate the machine, meaning that like Bruton’s omni-wheeled machines, the ball-wheeled bike can move forwards and backwards, while it is also able to strafe from left to right and rotate in any direction.
As with the rest of Bruton’s builds, many of the parts used, including the electronics, are self-made, with the British engineer leaning on his sizable 3D printing skills to create bespoke parts and components. In a nutshell, if you want somebody to take your engineering skills down a peg or two, James Bruton’s YouTube channel is the place to go.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
