James Bruton builds an omni-directional ball-wheeled bike
February 4, 2025 7:13 AM   Subscribe

 
That is some real-life MarioKart action right there!
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:01 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


Do we want Judge Dredd? Because this is how we get Judge Dredd.

very cool
posted by chavenet at 8:09 AM on February 4 [4 favorites]




It's nice to see a concept made with off-the-shelf technology that was physically impossible when I was studying engineering in the early 1990s. We had one 3d printed model that was made of very fragile sintered stuff. The idea of additive manufacture at home (admittedly on a ££££ budget: those big Lulzbots aren't cheap) was sci-fi back then. Having an IMU wasn't impossible, but they were big, precision-made and typically only available on a military research budget. And the main controller (the Teensy 4.1) is an absolute monster of a micro-controller. There wasn't anything that had a 600 MHz CPU clock back then. The (very rationed, unbelievably expensive) Cray that could be accessed remotely at the UK Computing research centre might have had more RAM and more bandwidth, but 64-bit floating point instructions in a few nanoseconds? Nope.
posted by scruss at 8:33 AM on February 4 [7 favorites]


Amazing! Future cities will be designed around this.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:52 AM on February 4 [10 favorites]




Scavengers Reign had a bike just like that, although it seemed to move like a regular bike.
posted by mahershalal at 9:14 AM on February 4


The 3D printer he was using looked pretty serious, and was made available to him by a sponsor. Is it really off-the-shelf?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:54 AM on February 4


That 3D printer looks like a LulzBot TAZ Workhorse+, which is totally off-the-shelf, as long as your shelf can support ~$3,000. The big nozzle makes prints like that waaaaay faster.
posted by caphector at 9:59 AM on February 4 [4 favorites]


Yeah, Lulzbot make some seriously big print heads. Some of them have been used to make custom full-limb prostheses: somewhere the 3d printed assistive tech charity I was with wouldn't go at all.
posted by scruss at 10:33 AM on February 4


Why wouldn't they go there? Was the cost prohibitive for them?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:35 AM on February 4


Eat your heart out, Dean Kamen!
posted by TedW at 10:35 AM on February 4


Looks like a ball!
posted by fairmettle at 10:46 AM on February 4


Feels like he's riding a horse.
posted by art.bikes at 10:52 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


Honest question, is there a problem that a ball-wheeled bike solves? Or does this fall in the "interesting thing just for fun" category?
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:55 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


It solves the problem of being able to strafe left or right, or rotate in place.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:57 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]


It solves the problem of not having a ball-wheeled bike, a problem I didn't know I had until I saw this video.
posted by Walleye at 11:08 AM on February 4 [19 favorites]


While I'm not sure if this design will end up being a practical improvement on the state of the art, I don't think we should dismiss this kind of research as "just for fun" either. It is attempting to make real improvements in maneuverability, which is a thing someone may have good reason to desire in a bike.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:08 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]


"...is there a problem that a ball-wheeled bike solves?"

Haven't watched yet, but maybe anything that takes a large surface area to avoid sinking into like swampy ground? Add ripples on the balls surfaces and do snow? Water if the balls can be scaled up and the electronics are fast enough.
posted by aleph at 11:13 AM on February 4


Amazing and cool!

Now would you *please* put a helmet on, James?
posted by erikred at 11:22 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


I'm not knocking it even if it's "just for fun"; I simply wondered if there's a real-world use case I'm not aware of (which is entirely possible).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:25 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


I like aleph's idea that the large surface area (and them being hollow) adds some unique value. In that realm, the competition would be from tracked vehicles like snowmobiles. It does seem a bit problematic to improve the traction of the ball, as the mechanism he's using to rotate it seems like it wouldn't do well if the surface were uneven.

But on the other hand, more traction on the ball would allow the motors to rotate it faster as well. It appears that skidding when the motors lose traction, and the ball popping out at high speeds, are both major design limitations at the moment.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:29 AM on February 4


Maybe if the ball were designed like a spherical gear, the gear notches could also act as treads. But then the snow getting stuck to the ball would probably cause problems when it gets between the ball and the motors.

The big problem with a ball wheel is that the tread surface doubles as the "axle" mechanism, the critical connection to the drivetrain. It's hard to solve the problem of how to keep it clean and connected.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 11:32 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


I do think this is super-cool, but the fact that you are driving the spheres from the outside fundamentally limits the practical applications for this approach. It's no accident that he test-drove this in a gymnasium: it has a very smooth, clean floor, and he still had to clean off the spheres halfway through. Using it outside, the spheres would probably pick up road grit and larger bits of debris that would interfere with the drive wheels unless there was some kind of continuous wipedown gizmo. Designing more tread into the surface of the spheres would also make the drive-wheel interfaces more problematic.

The ball-popping-out problem would be solved easily enough by adding a not-quite-touching collar below the equator of each sphere.
posted by adamrice at 11:35 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]


I’ve been watching James for a while — this was the culmination of a bunch of other projects and it was a thrill to see come together. The things a motivated person with a 3D printer can do these days is bonkers.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:47 AM on February 4


I love this and almost posted it because it's so frickin' cool.

It's also really cool that people are doing this kind of a thing as a DIY project, because it wasn't that long ago that something like the original Segway self-balancing scooter took huge piles of fuck-off money to develop.

As a cyclist? Yeah, this probably doesn't have any real world use for transportation or cycling. There isn't really any need to be able to go in reverse or sideways on a bike, and it has all kinds of issues with debris.

That being said, one thought that I had is that this might be one rare real-world application of magnetic gears and some kind of magnetic direct drive instead of the omnidirectional wheels.

I'm stretching my poor brain, here, but I could see lining the inside of the rigid ball wheels with a clever arrangement of magnets, perhaps a geodesic pattern or a stochastic pattern like they used to use on trackball mice, and then using some kind of 3 axis array of driver coils, effectively turning each ball into one large direct drive motor or wheel.

Then you could replace the friction drive wheels with idler wheels that could be soft or pliant enough to just roll over any debris or dirt stuck to the balls, or add some wiper blades or rubber to knock anything big off of it.

Or go really big and use active magnetic levitation so the wheel-balls don't have to touch anything at all.

This could theoretically open up much higher speeds and even finer control since if you have a direct drive magnetic wheel you also have a direct drive magnetic brake, and since all of your forces are at the very edge of the wheel/ball you could probably generate some totally ridiculous torque.

It may also be more feasible to make the ball/wheels way less rigid for some cushion and suspension for terrain.

Having something big and squishy like a rolligon wheel means it would float over sand or snow like a fat tire bike, so having something inflated and semi-rigid like a tire or big exercise ball could work with the magnets embedded in the casing or some kind of internal structure.

Or perhaps a nitinol memory wire mesh ball, perhaps with a tensegrity cable system structure inside.

If all of that worked? Now let's take away one of the wheels/balls.

That would probably make a pretty awesome all terrain wheel chair or power chair that can move in any direction, rotate in place and maaaaaybe even climb stairs and piles of rocks if the wheel was squishy enough or could be dynamically deformed or de-aired to conform to steps.
posted by loquacious at 12:09 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]


Is there a problem that a ball-wheeled bike solves?

Parallel parking.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:10 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]


Is there a problem that a ball-wheeled bike solves?

Societal Problem? Not that I'm aware of.

But in terms of an *all* terrain personal transportation device this is an interesting solution. Guessing at the diameter of those balls, but I think they're about 80 cm meaning if you were okay going up half way up the balls the displacement would be about 268 kg of water... meaning, you could create a version that could potentially glide over snow, sand, and water. Of course there's still 100 other implementation problems as mentioned above with keeping the drive wheels protected.

Super impressive for a YouTube channel. And I feel like these channels are best viewed as a demonstration of how to solve problems anyways.
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:28 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


Shut up and take my money.
posted by zardoz at 12:57 PM on February 4


Do we want Judge Dredd? Because this is how we get Judge Dredd.

Judge Dredd But 90 Pounds Soaking Wet And Only On Perfectly Smooth Surfaces In Perfectly Harmless Weather is definitely the Judge Dredd I would prefer.
posted by mhoye at 1:18 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]


> Judge Dredd But 90 Pounds Soaking Wet And Only On Perfectly Smooth Surfaces In Perfectly Harmless Weather is definitely the Judge Dredd I would prefer.

I AM THE BALL. *falls over*
posted by loquacious at 1:20 PM on February 4 [5 favorites]


Problem to be solved? How about a lack of team sports featuring people on these any direction you want to go vehicles, rolling around in a gymnasium trying to get a ball someplace.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:36 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


Another absolutely insane YouTube inventor. I'm endlessly flabbergasted by these people and the mad stuff they create. See also Colin Furze, Stuff Made Here and Styropyro.
posted by mokey at 1:39 PM on February 4


I kept expecting Philomena Cunk to pop in with a question like, "Do you have a problem with wheels, or do you just like balls?"
posted by SPrintF at 1:43 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]


> It's hard to solve the problem of how to keep it clean and connected.

Magnets!
posted by NotAYakk at 2:02 PM on February 4


Hell yeah. When I was in 8th grade I remember dreaming about making a car like this, I was not an engineer, but tried to design something based on the mouse. I had absolutely no knowledge of torque, etc... So I never got far in the concept being "powerful bearings housed in a wheelhouse that can push it.

I've seen the one warehouse type thing with the weird cylinder rollers, which fit the purpose, but this? THIS IS THE DESIGN I WAS LOOKING FOR! \m/
posted by symbioid at 2:47 PM on February 4


thinking about the applications of this in accessibility and mobility tech. power chairs and wheelchairs that can move more freely in more directions would be a boon for the disabled community, I think as someone who hasn’t yet had to use mobility aids but has watched many I love do so.
posted by one-half-ole at 4:05 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]


As scruss notes above, the Teensy 4.1 he's using as the main microcontroller for the project is indeed a beast. I used the Teensy 4.1 as the main microcontroller for the initial versions of my hobby project. I had it servicing an interrupt every microsecond (a million interrupts a second!) with acceptable latency and jitter, no mean feat by itself. But on top of that, at the same time it was also was pushing out about 32Mbit/sec of data over its 100Mbit Ethernet connection! I'm using an FPGA for the purpose these days, but it's illustrative that it took upgrading to an FPGA to significantly improve on what I was able to do with that microcontroller!
posted by notoriety public at 5:49 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]


Why wouldn't they go there?


(re the 3d printed assistive tech charity I used to work for)

Liability. Because we were making designs anyone could print, we couldn't guarantee their strength, so we didn't produce load-bearing designs. The org's first design (a fully -accessible sailing dinghy) almost killed its user after a maintenance error, so they were quite cautious.

The group that made the prosthetics - Nia Technologies - always had their techs make their parts. Also, they were working in countries that were far less litigious
posted by scruss at 6:11 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


One thing occurs to me. If the ball is big enough, it's easy to roll over *anything*. The leverage is there at the bottom when driven from the top.

Have three drive elements on each ball. Have them split in a Delta (or Wye) with enough spacing to hang down the sides enough. Then have three balls, each with this 3 drive elements, all three connected in a Wye for seat/platform. It's inherently stable, no need for IMU or electronics. Have the drive elements have rubber caterpillar treads with great friction on the rippled surface of the ball. If crud gets picked up by the ginormous ball (and doesn't fall off as it climbs up the sides) it'll just be rode over by the caterpillar drive.
posted by aleph at 6:14 PM on February 4


If the ball is big enough, it's easy to roll over *anything*

"Give me a ball big enough, and a place to stand on it, and I can roll over the world!"
posted by notoriety public at 6:26 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]


[cue Katamari Demacy music]
posted by aleph at 6:33 PM on February 4 [4 favorites]


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