http://i.imgur.com/NpdpJ.jpg

Hmm.. self balancing omnidirectional ball driven motorcycle.. what's not to like?

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Nice balls

Yes, except this might actually be able to make that kind of turn, where Batman's ride would not in real life.

Video of it in motion??

This is at my school, I want to work on a cool project like this

Concept is cool. I would try to ride it.

This is at my school, I want to work on a cool project like this
The college I attended has a formula SAE race team and they allowed anyone to join. You may try to find out who is building it and see if you can contribute. Just don't let them know your crash record. ;)

Well I'm sure they'd want to crash test it

Our SAE team is the Baja truck. I wish it were the forumla SAE competition instead and I'd be all over it. The Baja team is a bunch of hicks with loud trucks who just want to go race in dirt...

thats pretty cool.

do the motors provide braking force as well?

they look like high output tracked steppers so it would be entirely feasible to use them for brakes. i dont think you could get regenerative from them though.

dont see any capacitors so you're probably right.

I doubt it will go any faster than walking pace, given it's using omni directional motors often used in robotics from which i've seen go quite slow due to complex gearing and such, but cool none the less.

I don't think you can use steppers as a generator in this instance "i'm not sure if it's possible at all", as they will always be working and never coasting as they will be giving constant feedback to the wheel to keep it balanced. I'll have to take a Z axes motor off my RepRap and experiment.

Edit: Jiggles I can't find a video of this thing anywhere, could you see if there are any videos of this publicly available at San Jose University? I run a small hackerspace and a buddy of mine is making an electric motorcycle at the moment, I think this would be a cool thing to show at our next meet.

I haven't seen it on campus yet, just heard about it. Its probably a joint electrical and mechanical engineering project and sadly I'm in industrial :(

It's funny, the first thing I recognized from the picture was the hallways :lol:

I like those rearsets...

http://www.memecreator.org/static/images/memes/1124419.jpg