Designers Create a "More Efficient" Chainless Bike

by Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil

from http://www.treehugger.com/

 
Photo via StringBike

The Bike, Unchained

A group of designers in Hungary have done away with what has long been a staple of bicycle design, those oily old chains, with their creation, the StringBike. Instead of being propelled forward the traditional way, this novel new bike utilizes a clever symmetrical rope and pulley system that may make cycling safer, smoother, and more efficient -- and it just may be the way everyone pedals around in the future.

While the StringBike's system of strings is a bit more complicated than the chain and gears you're used to, the way it operates is actually surprisingly simple.

PhysOrg explains how it works:

The rotation of the pedals forces arms at each side to swing forward and backward on its shaft. When moving forward, the arm pulls the driving wire that is wound around a drum on the rear wheel, forcing the wheel to rotate. The arms at each side alternate so that when one is moving forward the other is moving backward.

The new system has 19 "gear" positions and the transmission ratio can be changed at any time by turning a shifting knob on the right handle grip. This moves the pulley shafts up and down along a traction path on an eccentric disc, which has 19 notches to adjust the height of the pulleys and distance between the center of rotation and the shaft. The gears can be changed even if the bicycle is stationary, but gear change speed increases with the speed of the bicycle.

Here's a video to give you a better idea.



Doing away with those clunky old chains in exchange for the StringBike's polyethylene rope comes with plenty of advantages for the cycling enthusiast. Because the drive system is symmetrical, utilizing both legs separately, the StringBike is said to be more efficient and easier to handle on winding streets.

And there are several other advantages of the string system that bike commuters, in particularly, are sure to appreciate. The unique design allows for quick removal of the rear tire to make the bike easier to store or carry around. Also, the strings are dry -- meaning no more arriving to work with oil-stained pant legs.

Only time will tell if this wildly innovative new string-based system can catch on in the world of bicycle design, but still one thing is for certain -- imagination, and perhaps bikes too, are best left unchained.

The Bat Pod Replica You Can Actually Ride

From: http://gizmodo.com/

Unlike the previous replica—which was more dragster than an actual road bike—it seems like this Bat Pod can actually be handled like any other motorcycle. Quite an impressive work:

If you are around Mountain View, California, you may actually spot it on the street. [Reddit]

This Bendable Bike Can Tie Itself to Any Post

by Brit Liggett
from: http://inhabitat.com/

We Inhabitat writers have had our fair share of bicycles and bicycle parts stolen on the mean streets of New York City. It seems these days you’ve got to lock everything down (even the brakes!) in order to keep your cycle intact. That often means buying more than one lock and disassembling your bike every time you leave it unguarded. Kevin Scott hopes to change all of that. He just unveiled his revolutionary bendable bike. That’s right, with the push of a lever the cycle becomes bike-Houdini and can wrap around any post making it easy to secure all its parts with just one lock. No more clunky chains? Sign us up!

Scott is a 21 year old graduate of The De Montfort University in the UK and was runner-up in the Business Design Centre New Designer of the Year Award. The bicycle he created uses a ratchet mechanism to allow it to be both rigid and bendable — but not all at once. Once you hop off the bike, you simply push a lever on the frame and the bike becomes flexible, so you can wrap it around your nearest pole or bike rack.

Scott decided to create the bike specifically so that all of its pieces could be secured easily with one lock. Scott’s bike is a prototype at this point but he’s looking to parlay this technology into a business venture. “I am now going to take this forward to produce a fully resolved solution and hopefully this will be a stepping stone into a career in the bike designing industry,” he says. Anyone looking for a new bike-genius might want to give this chap a call.

Via Gizmodo

MythBuster Adam Savage + SBU (Self-Balancing Unicycle)

focusdesigns — December 20, 2009 — Adam Savage of the MythBusters receives his SBU, an electric self-balancing unicycle by Focus Designs Inc.

Available now in limited supply!
Get yours here:
http://focusdesigns.com/
Or send us an email:
info@focusdesigns.com

Video by: Valeo Visual (http://valeovisual.com/)

New wheelchair gets its first real-world test

The Leveraged Freedom Chair
Photo - Photo courtesy of Amos Winter

Grad student’s device aims to meet the needs of millions of people in the developing world.

Morgan Bettex, MIT News Office

February 18, 2010

The U.N. Development Programme estimates that less than 1 percent of the need for wheelchairs in developing countries is met by local production, partly because small workshops can’t exploit economies of scale to be profitable. Moreover, the wheelchairs that are available aren’t designed for people who must push themselves over rough roads and muddy walking paths often encountered in the Third World. As a result, millions of people must rely on others to carry them or be stranded inside their homes.

What is needed is an affordable device that can carry users comfortably and efficiently off-road, but is also small and maneuverable enough to use indoors. Amos Winter, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, along with a team of undergraduates and international design collaborators, has designed such a device, which he describes as performing like a combination of a desk chair and a mountain bike — "something you can comfortably sit in all day and maneuver around the office, but also use to efficiently commute to and from work.” Constructed from widely available, cheap bicycle parts, the Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) features two large levers attached to a bicycle drivetrain that helps the chair power through mud and over rocky paths.

Winter recently returned from East Africa, where he spent three weeks in January surveying six disabled people who had tested prototypes of the LFC. Using feedback from the four-month trial, as well as a $50,000 grant he recently received from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Winter is currently tweaking the LFC design in anticipation of advancing it to large-scale production, which would provide local manufacturers with the tools to produce 500 to 1,000 units per month.

Amos Winter, right, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, spent three weeks in January testing the Leveraged Freedom Chair in East Africa.
Photo: Joseph Kisyoky

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 20 million people in developing countries require wheelchairs; Winter estimates that 70 percent of those people live in rural areas where regular wheelchairs simply don’t work. He has been studying the problem of wheelchair production in Third World countries since the summer of 2005, when he traveled to Tanzania on a public-service fellowship and saw firsthand how wheelchairs that rely on hand-rim propulsion are too difficult to use on rough terrain and for long-distance travel. He also learned that hand-powered tricycles are too big to use indoors and usually have only one gear. His solution “for people who grew up in a village where they were literally dragging themselves to school” is the LFC.

By pushing two levers located on each side of the LFC, a user can change mechanical advantage by simply moving hand position in order to go fast on flat ground or to produce enough torque to travel over sand or through mud. The removable levers hook into a bicycle drivetrain that has been converted to work on a wheelchair and is made entirely of bicycle parts that can be found throughout the developing world. This means that the LFC can be made and repaired anywhere one has access to a hacksaw, welder, drill and vice.

Freedom to move around

Winter has been developing the design ever since the concept won the MIT IDEAS Competition in 2008, partly in conjunction with a wheelchair design class he teaches at MIT’s Mobility Lab. Winter founded this lab in 2007 so MIT students could collaborate with local manufacturers and experts from the developed world to produce mobility aid technologies.

One of those experts is Matt McCambridge, a designer for Whirlwind Wheelchair International, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that produces durable, low-cost wheelchairs in developing countries.

McCambridge likes the simplicity of the LFC design, but says he has been most impressed with the intentionally slow, methodical implementation of the LFC. He praised Winter for conducting user testing early, “rather than inventing something in the lab, then using donor money to make thousands of them and forcing them on disabled people who really have no option but to smile and say, ‘thank you.’ ” McCambridge believes that Winter’s process should produce solid results that grow slowly.

Harrison O'Hanley ‘11 helps construct a prototype of the LFC.
Photo: Mario Bollini

The implementation began last summer, when Winter launched his first trial in East Africa with collaboration from the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya. He and Mario Bollini ‘09, Danielle DeLatte ‘11, Benjamin Judge ‘11 and Harrison O’Hanley ‘11, spent a month in Kenya building eight prototypes of the LFC. Each chair cost slightly less than $200 to make, which Winter said is roughly the price of a regular wheelchair in Kenya. Weighing about 65 pounds, or five to 10 pounds more than a regular wheelchair, the LFC was customized for the trial participants, who range in age and live near varied terrain in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Winter returned to Africa with MIT senior Tish Scolnik four months later to interview the participants and test the efficiency of the LFC for each user.

What they learned from the “phenomenal feedback” is that although the LFC is more efficient than a regular wheelchair for plowing through mud and over big stones, it is still too wide and heavy. Winter will make the chair lighter by lowering the seat four inches and shifting the wheels back two inches, which will eliminate the need for the bulky mounting brackets that are currently used to attach the rear wheels to the chair.

‘My little angel machine’

In addition to reducing the width and weight, Winter will focus on improving the LFC for indoor use so that it functions just as well as a normal wheelchair when the levers are removed. He uses the desk chair/mountain bike analogy to describe how the LFC is intended to be used all day. Although someone might spend many hours each day sitting in a desk chair, it would be horrible to use that chair to commute to work, especially if the commute involved dirt roads. Similarly, while the mountain bike would be great for the commute, it would be awkward and uncomfortable to sit on all day at the office. “What we have now is an LFC that is great off-road and is comfortable to sit on, but is still too big to comfortably use indoors,” Winter said.

Winter interviews one of the six trial participants.
Photo: Joseph Kisyoky

With the trial results, guidance from manufacturing collaborators and help from a group from his design class, Winter will use the IADB grant to design a new prototype and produce about 30 chairs for another trial that will begin in August in Guatemala. One crucial goal of the trip is to develop the manufacturing equipment that will be used to build the chairs for large-scale production, which Winter hopes will begin in 2011.

Until then, he continues to review the feedback from the East African users, including Abdullah Munish, a Tanzanian spinal injury survivor who lives in a hilly town with rough roads and who has tested various wheelchairs over the past decade. Munish said that in terms of capability and functionality, the LFC is “number one” compared to other wheelchairs.

“It is strong and stable in African terrain, and you can travel long distances and uphill without using too much energy,” he told Winter. “I would say that we have [a] life saver … I just call it my little angel machine.”

Video:

Amos Winter discusses the Leveraged Freedom Chair (LFC) and results of recent trials in East Africa.

Battery-powered bicycles rule

By Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press
From: http://articles.sfgate.com

Estimates put the number of scooters and electric bikes, like this one in Shanghai, at 65 million on the roadways of China.

Credit: Associated Press

Shanghai — It's a simple pleasure, but Xu Beilu savors it daily: gliding past snarled traffic on her motorized bicycle, relaxed and sweat-free alongside the pedal-pushing masses.

China, the world's bicycle kingdom - one for every three inhabitants - is going electric.
Workers weary of crammed public transport or pedaling long distances to jobs are upgrading to battery-powered bikes and scooters. Even some who can afford cars are ditching them for electric two-wheelers to avoid traffic jams and expensive gasoline.

The bicycle was a vivid symbol of China in more doctrinaire communist times, when virtually no one owned a car. Even now, nearly two decades after the country began its great leap into capitalism, it still has 430 million bicycles by government count, outnumbering electric bikes and scooters 7-1.

But production of electric two-wheelers has soared from fewer than 200,000 eight years ago to 22 million last year, mostly for the domestic market. The industry estimates about 65 million are on Chinese roads.

Car sales are also booming but there are still only 24 million for civilian use, because few of the 1.3 billion population can afford them. And unlike in many other developing countries, Chinese cities still have plenty of bicycle lanes, even if some have made way for cars and buses.

"E-bike" riders are on the move in the morning or late at night, in good weather or bad. When it's wet, they are a rainbow army in plastic capes. On fine days, women don gloves, long-sleeved white aprons and face-covering sun guards.

One of them is Xu, on her Yamaha e-bike, making the half-hour commute from her apartment to her job as a marketing manager. She had thought of buying a car but dropped the idea. "It's obvious that driving would be more comfortable, but it's expensive," she says.

"I like riding my e-bike during rush hour, and sometimes enjoy a laugh at the people stuck in taxis. It's so convenient and helpful in Shanghai, since the traffic is worse than ever."
The trend is catching on in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In Japan, plug-in bicycles are favored by cost-conscious companies and older commuters. "Many company workers are beginning to use them to visit clients instead of driving, to save fuel costs," says Miyuki Kimizuka of the Japan Bicycle Promotion Institute, a private industry group.

Australians use electric bicycles in rural towns without bus and train service. Tony Morgan, managing director of The Electric Bicycle Co. Pty. Ltd., the continent's largest manufacturer and retailer of e-bikes, says he has sold about 20,000 in the past decade, priced at 1,000-2,000 Australian dollars (about $800-$1,600).

In the Netherlands, an especially bicycle-friendly country, the industry says sales passed 138,800 last year.
In India, Vietnam and other developing countries, competition from motorcycles, as well as a lack of bike lanes and other infrastructure, are obstacles.

Indian sales have risen about 15 percent a year to 130,000 units, thanks in part to a 7,500 rupee ($150) government rebate that brings the cost down to about the cost of a conventional bicycle. But they are far outnumbered by the millions of new motorcycles taking to India's roadways.

In China, electric bikes sell for 1,700 yuan to 3,000 yuan ($250 to $450). They require no helmet, plates or driver's license, and they aren't affected by restrictions many cities impose on fuel-burning two-wheelers.
It costs a mere 1 yuan (15 U.S. cents) - about the same as the cheapest bus fare - to charge a bike for a day's use, says Guo Jianrong, head of the Shanghai Bicycle Association, an industry group.

They look like regular bicycles, only a bit heavier with the battery strapped on. Some can be pedaled; others run solely on battery. In China, their maxium weight is about 40 kilograms (90 pounds), and maximum legal speed is about 20 kph (12 mph).

"For us, these are tools for transportation," Guo said. "We're not like Americans and Europeans, who tend to bicycle for fun or exercise."

(C) San Francisco Chronicle 2009

BMW’s Simple concept–which kinda looks like a Stealth Bomber with training wheels–is a hybrid trike that gets around 120 mpg.

The Simple (which stands for Sustainable and Innovative Mobility Product for Low Energy consumption) does 60 mph in just under ten seconds and has a top speed of 125 mph. The car weighs just over 900 lbs and has a super low drag coefficient of 0.18.

Sebastian Schelper, BMW’s Project Lead for the Simple concept, says BMW “wanted to minimize the use of resources while using the vehicle but also during the production of the vehicle.”

BMW’s target for the concept is the professional commuter. Specifically, those professionals who travel a lot and often alone. Oh, you know who you are!

Simple is as tall as a 5 Series BMW but when it comes to length the MINI Cooper has it beat. The interior of the vehicle has seating space much like a 3 Series coupe: so not a whole lot.

Schelper says that driving the car is much like “riding an endless wave with your surfboard .”

Its driving performance is aided by automatic tilting technology though the hydraulics are only activated in exceptional coniditions. The driver feels no transverse forces and need not compensate for any lateral movements. The team wanted to combine both the features and the advantages from both cars and motorcycles.

While BMW has been a bit tight-lipped about its foray into the microcar market, this concept probably falls under the Bavarian automaker’s Project I. Other vehicles included in the project are the Megacity and a Z2. It’s rumored the Z2 will be a hybrid offering about 47 mpg.

The car is currently on display at the BMW Museum in Munich.

Source: Wired’s Autopia

Hybrid2 public bike concept promises to help power city buses

by Donald Melanson,

Hybrid bikes are one thing, but designer Chiyi Chen looks to have something far grander in mind for his Hybrid2 bike concept, which he says could one day help power fleets of city buses. To do that, the hybrid part of the bike (a regenerative braking system) wouldn't be used to help power the bike itself at all, but would instead store the energy in an ultracapacitor that'd then feed the energy back into the grid when its parked at a special bike stand, which would in turn be used to help charge the hybrid electric buses. Not one to overlook an ingenious little detail, Chen has also devised a special card RFID card that would not only be used to unlock the bike, but keep track of the energy that each rider generates -- build up enough credits and you can ride the bus for free. Intrigued? Head on past the break for a video overview from the man himself.

[Via Inhabitat]